Cleaning Wood Bowls

One of my favorite things to collect are wood bowls.  Let's just say I have more than I probably should.  I have them everywhere around here.  Most times I don't care what kind of shape they are in.  I have some with repairs, some that are vintage and not antique, small, large it doesn't matter.  I must have them all.  For the most part I leave them as is.  Meaning I don't clean them other than a quick dusting, which we all know dust adds to the primitive ambiance in our homes. LOL. However, I have some that feel sticky.  Like maybe they were in someone's kitchen around grease.  Yeah, yeah, I know some were used for butter. I'm talking fried chicken grease from 10 years ago that now has dust and dirt stuck to it.  Kind of like this one where it appears dark.  I'm not going to talk about the bowls I have above my kitchen cabinets because I'm sure they are bad!

Well, the other day I decided to try and clean the above bowls in the first picture.  In the past I have tried white vinegar and baking soda, Murphy's soap, Dawn, you name it I've tried it. They did not work like I thought they would.  Anyway, I wanted to try one more thing.

I'm sure many of you already knew how to clean your bowls, but in case you don't and you want to here is my secret.

Now, I have no idea how old this ammonia is, but it was in my house when I bought it and the people who lived here were in their eighties.  Ok, one had already passed away and the other was living in a nursing home.  But still I'm betting it's old.  I remembered back in the day when I was married, and we bought our first house, that my MIL and I cleaned the kitchen floor with straight ammonia on our hands and knees.  The what I thought was green linoleum was actually yellow when we were done.  I figured I might as well try it on my bowls.  Now, if you can't handle the smell of ammonia please do this outside and with gloves. I am a rebel and I did it in my kitchen with no gloves.  What I did was pour just a little bit of ammonia in the wood bowl and a little bit of water. I used my hand to "wash" the bowl.  Let me tell you that water was gross. I did that until I was happy with the result.  I did the same to the back of the bowl except I just poured the ammonia over top of the bowl and hand washed it.  Then I just rinsed the bowl with water and put it on a towel to dry.  They looked really dry and dull once they dried.

 So out came my Old English furniture polish and an old rag.  They got back their beautiful color and sheen seen below.

My other favorite go to is Howard's Feed-N-Wax.  I didn't use it this time, but you certainly could.

I hope this helps if you find a bowl that you have to have and it is gross to just buy it.  I have one around here that stinks like cat pee still even though I bought it years ago.  I think I might try this on it and see what happens. 

P.S. If you like my strawberries in the bowl stay tuned because that will be my first tutorial since I haven't done any for a long time.