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Welcome to Clean Enough, a new kind of cleaning column for busy home cooks who have better things to do than scrub and sanitize around the clock. Every other week, neurodivergent writer and mom Emily Farris shares tips, tools, and products that can help you stay on top of the dirtiest spots in the kitchen while also dispelling a few cleaning myths and cutting down on clutter.
I do a lot of painting and patching projects on the crumbly plaster walls of my 107-year-old house. I also have ADHD, which means I’m not always great at wrapping up the not-so-exciting final details of those projects—namely, putting my tools back in their proper places. That’s how I recently ended up with a cheap plastic putty knife in my kitchen sink.
To be fair, that particular tool was in the sink because spackle, the substance I use to fill nail holes, is water soluble, and I had planned to wash it off…eventually. By the time I did get around to washing my putty knife, I was simultaneously facing down another one of my least favorite tasks: a pile of hand-wash-only sheet pans.
One pan in particular, a colorful Little Sheet from the DTC brand Great Jones, was especially daunting. I’d used it the night before to make toaster-oven nachos for my kids. Though not quite as nonstick as its competitors, the Little Sheet’s ceramic coating makes it generally pretty easy to clean. But cooked-on cheese is tough to get off of any surface, so I usually soak nacho pans for a while then get in there with my little squarish plastic pan scraper.
In that moment, though, some combination of laziness, curiosity, and ingenuity inspired me to tackle my dirty dishes with the tool that was already in my hand. I sprayed the crusty Colby Jack with warm water to soften it a bit and then started scraping. But I didn’t have to scrape for long because my cheap paint-prep tool did a better job of dislodging cooked-on cheese than any other pan-scraping tool I’d ever tried.
Because a plastic putty knife has a fine edge, it’s easy to lodge under gunk without scratching even delicate ceramic nonstick cookware. The leverage that comes from the long, flexible handle makes it more efficient than traditional nylon pan scrapers, and the length keeps your hands cleaner too. A 1.5"–2" blade is also far more functional than the (mostly useless) narrow scrapers built onto the back of dish brushes.
After quickly cleaning my sheet pans, I used my plastic putty knife to effortlessly scrape eggs off the end of my wooden spatula before moving on to an unidentified goo that had dried onto the seat of my toddler’s high chair.
No, a putty knife intended for smoothing out wall spackle isn’t made of food-grade BPA-free plastic and you shouldn't dip it into boiling water or anything. But I’m not trying to eat off of it, or even put it in the dishwasher. I’m simply using it to scrape cooked on-food off of my pots and pans. And it works like a dream. Even with just warm water and maybe a little dish soap.
All of that said, I do not recommend scraping your dishes with the same putty knife you use for spackling—especially because a brand new one will only set you back about five bucks.
Warner Plastic Flex Putty Knife
Allway Polypropylene Putty Knife Set
Sinyiol Putty Scrapers, Pack of 5
By Sarah Jampel, Kendra Vaculin, Emily Farris, and Alaina Chou
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