Cleaning pots and pans Attempt 1

First, do not judge me! And second, do not judge me!

I have owned some of my pots and pans for thirteen years. Seriously. One set my grandma bought me when I was eighteen and I just never could part with them. The other set was bought by my husband's grandma so we kept them forever too.

My cleaning approach was soap, water, dishwasher. I had no idea how to get the other stuff off of the pans.

Recently, I decided that despite the sentimental value of my pots and pans, I needed new ones, but first, maybe I should clean these and see if any were worth saving.

I, of course, first searched Pinterest for ideas and the first one was so easy that.... well, honestly, I forgot to read the whole blog about it. The solution was to use Easy Off Oven Cleaner to remove the burns and other gunk that develops on pots and pans over time. I assumed this was all I needed to know, so I bought fume free Easy Off and sprayed away. I followed the directions per the bottle and waited 2 hours then scrubbed. It worked great on the stainless steel pan but my generic TJ Maxx pan showed little improvement and my KitchenAid pots and pansweren't even worth posting pictures of, because there was really no results. However, I was so impressed by the shininess of my stainless steel pan (despite it still showing some black) that I decided I better reread the blog to make sure I did every last step. I missed one!
According to the blogger, she sprayed her pans and put them in a trash bag and left them over night. I may try this. I don't think I will on the KitchenAid pans because they are blue on the outside and I am afraid it might take that off and ruin them. I definitely need to do more research.

To be continued...........