Now, a woodburning stove is all well and good of an evening with ITV3 on, a glass of wine and a lively discussion about an unsolved murder. When it looks like this, we’re golden.

But then we wake up and in the cold light of morning, it looks like this:

To work.

You will need:

• Some newspaper (sounds radical don’t worry I will explain)
• Some zoflora, just for hell of it really. We went with the ever faithful Country Garden
• A scourer
• Some kitchen roll (Old glory)
• A brush and pan
• A stick
• A bin
• A fine disregard for the principles of Entropy.

 

First, clean the tray. Use the stick to prod down the big bits into the tray. For some reason, I always feel like a monkey doing this.

 

It probably doesn’t hurt to pop this in the dishwasher from time to time, but this is only a light clean, not a deep clean so we just empty it in the bin with the wine bottles, council tax demands and empty Zoflora (sob!) bottles. (Bin not pictured out of respect)

The tools:

Like in one of those text based adventure games ‘USE NEWSPAPER TO CLEAN GLASS’. BEFORE:

Watch the streaks vanish, just vanish. Incredible.

After:

Now use the brush and pan to clean the inside. This is ony a light clean so only dust, no need to fire up the dyson today.

Next the base. HAVE AT IT! Use the Zoflora’d sponge.

The newspaper we can use to light the next fire. (And we’ll need it with this bloody weather…supposed to be spring

Gleam: