There is a corner of every Singapore kitchen that gets used twice a day and cleaned twice a year. Not the hob, which announces its own mess, and not the sink, which you stand at anyway. It is the row of plug-in appliances along the counter — the ones that quietly do the cooking while you are doing something else.
They get away with it because they look fine from the outside. A wipe across the top, a rinse of whatever came out of them, and the job feels finished. The parts that need attention are inside, underneath and behind — and in our climate that matters more than it would somewhere drier.
Boil a litre and a half several times a day for a year and minerals accumulate, however soft the supply. They settle as a dull film on the element and a faint cloudiness on the inner walls, slowly enough that there is never a day you notice it arrive. A glass-bodied kettle shows you. A steel one simply doesn't.
It is the easiest of the four to put right. Half water, half white vinegar, bring it to the boil, leave it half an hour, pour it away and rinse twice. The spout filter, if yours has one, lifts out and goes under the tap with an old toothbrush. Do it this evening, while you are waiting for something else.
Most of us wash the inner pot and consider the appliance done. But nearly every rice cooker has an inner lid plate that clips or twists out, and a steam vent or condensation cup at the back. Starch-heavy steam passes through both every time you cook, and neither gets rinsed unless you deliberately remove it.
Take them off tonight and look. If there is a sour note when you open a cooker left on keep-warm, this is almost always where it comes from. Both parts wash in the sink like any other dish. The well the pot sits in wants a barely damp cloth once it is cold — never a rinse under the tap.
The basket comes out, gets washed, goes back in, and you have cleaned perhaps a third of the machine. The underside of the drawer, the walls of the chamber and the element above them never meet water, and that is exactly where aerosolised oil ends up. It also explains the smell on preheat: last month's dinner, warming through again.
Unplug it, let it go completely cold, then turn the drawer upside down — the grease is on the outside of it, not the inside. Warm soapy water and a soft brush for the drawer and basket, a damp cloth for the chamber walls, a gentle wipe of the element once it is stone cold. The base never goes in the sink.
You wipe the floor of a microwave, because it faces you when the door opens. The roof of the cavity — directly above everything that has been spitting upwards for months — is the part nobody thinks to check. So is the wheeled ring under the glass turntable, and the rubber seal around the door frame where crumbs gather and stay.
Steam does most of the work. A bowl of water with a few slices of lemon, four minutes on high, then leave the door shut for five more. Whatever is baked on softens and lifts with a cloth. Start at the roof, so the drips land on a floor you have not done yet.
Heat, moisture, a daily cycle, and a humid flat to sit in between uses. Each of these appliances pushes oil, starch or steam into the air around it, and that film does not stop at the edge of the counter. It lands on the cupboard doors below, the wall behind, the extractor above, and eventually the floor — which is why kitchen flooring turns faintly tacky in a way no other room's does, and why floor deep cleaning is so often booked for the kitchen alone.
You do not need a free Saturday. Pick whichever you use most, do it this evening, and let the others follow across the week. Roughly in order of effort:
The harder half of a kitchen is the half you cannot reach on a weeknight: the extractor and its ducting, the tops of the cupboards, the grout you have stopped seeing. That is what a deep clean is for, and a regular housekeeping visit is what stops the room drifting back. If you would like the rest of the kitchen brought up to meet it, book your next clean. The four things on your counter, though — those are yours, and tonight is as good a night as any.
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