I struggle to clean my iron. I have tried every product on the market for this and nothing has thoroughly done the job. I am always left with some spots that refuse to come clean. Well, not any more.
A while back I read a tip in Threads magazine about iron cleaning which suggested using ceramic cook top cleaner. I bought a bottle and tried it and, once again, could not get the iron completely clean. So this week I tried a different approach. I made a large puddle of the cleaner on my teflon pressing sheet, warmed up the iron for just a minute at the lowest temperature and then turned off the iron. I smeared the sole plate into the puddle of cleaner and made sure the entire surface of the plate was covered. I then left the iron with the sole plate down on the pressing sheet in the cleaner for several hours. I re-warmed the plate of the iron briefly, turned off the heat and wiped away the cleaner. Every last spot came off this time. As always I had to deal with the cleaner getting into the steam holes but found a pipe cleaner a handy tool to remove the residue. So if you have trouble getting your iron completely clean give this method a shot.