I think everyone can agree that the biggest pill to swallow about adult life is just how often you have to clean the kitchen. Crumbs and dirt seem to appear as if by magic, and no amount of wiping keeps your surfaces clean for very long. 

And the hob is undoubtedly one of the most difficult areas to keep clean. I like to think of myself as being pretty tidy, but the state of my hob after cooking a meal would suggest otherwise. So after weeks putting off giving it a proper clean, I decided enough was enough - it was time to really get in there and make it shine.

I will be the first to admit that I'm a very surface-level cleaner, or 'fake cleaning' as I like to call it. So I'll give the hob a quick wipe after cooking, but you'll never catch me removing the burner caps or the pan supports - or god forbid cleaning under the gas switches. 

But I'd recently spotted a cleaning tip online that said you can clean every single part of your hob with just one product - washing up liquid.

This sounded like the perfect simple, low-effort hack, so I was eager to try it out. And the results were beyond impressive. 

Armed with my bottle of Fairy Liquid - which I got for 99p from Aldi - I got to work. First, I filled up a basin with warm soapy water and placed the burner caps in here to soak whilst I got to work on the rest of the hob. 

The pan supports were also put to one side, ready to be tackled later. For the main surface - the most challenging part - I applied some of the dish soap and began to buff it in with a damp cloth, making sure to really get into the little crevices and stains I'd avoided for so long. 

This was repeated a couple of times, and then the soapy residue was wiped away with another clean cloth. And despite being such a simple hack, the results were unbelievably good. 

Gone were the streaks and stains on the hob's steel surface, leaving behind a shiny and brand-new appearance. I honestly didn't expect this to work as well as it did, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

As for the rest of the hob parts, soaking them in the soapy water seemed to do the trick. I simply rinsed off the burner caps with clean water and gave the pan supports a quick scrub under the tap with a sponge, before putting everything back together. 

If anyone is looking for a low-effort, budget-friendly hob cleaning hack then I can't recommend this enough. I'll definitely be doing this more often to keep my hob looking perfectly shiny.