A range hood is made to make sure that grease, smoke and odours don't spread in your home while you're cooking. It's an invaluable tool when it comes to maintaining a good air quality in your house. However, in order to keep it functional and safe, you need to keep an eye on the filter. Rangehood filters that haven't been cleaned in a long time are fire hazards, as well as sources for odour. In order to prevent this from happening, you need to clean the filter regularly.
Hot water
The first thing you need to do when cleaning your range hood filters is to fill a bucket or bowl with very hot water. Make sure the bowl or the bucket is large enough for you to completely dip your filter in. The water should be hot and close to boiling to be able to get all the grease gathered in your filter off. You could either boil the water you need and leave it on the stove to cool off for a bit before using it or use the hottest water you can get from your tap. Make sure to wear gloves when dipping the filter in the water. You're not going to dip your hands in it, but if some of it splashes up on you as you're dipping the filter, you could injure yourself.
Soap
After you've put the filter in the water, you'll need to degrease it. There are cleaning products specifically made for degreasing that you can use, but if you don't want to buy new cleaning products, you can also use an ordinary degreasing dish soap. To further add to the degreasing powers of the soap, you could also add some baking soda to the water to get heavy dirt off your filter. Use a dish brush to scrub the filter while it's in the soapy water. Avoid using steel wool to brush your filter, as it might damage it.
Rinsing and drying
After this, you need to rinse the filter thoroughly to get rid of all the soap. This is important as dried soap on your range hood filter can attract even more dirt to stick to it later. Then you can put the filter on a kitchen towel and let it dry. Make sure it's completely dry before putting it back into your range hood. If you put a moist filter in there, you can invite moisture into the fan and cause it to rust, which might cause it to break prematurely.
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