When my parents bought the house we're living in now (my parents are the first owners of this house) the builders had already installed the microwave and oven before we saw it, and they were both stainless steel.

So, when we went to buy a refrigerator, we got a stainless steel one just so it wouldnt look weird in the kitchen.

I like it, but that's probably just because I like silver as a color, and it'll go with whatever other colors we might put in the house later on if we re-do the tile or cabinetry someday.

I dont think the stainless is difficult to keep clean, but then, I learned how to clean stainless steel at one of my old jobs. (fast food restaurant) and that was one of my favorite cleaning jobs to do when I worked there. I used to strip off the old stainless cleaner with carbonated water and then re-polish it with the stainless cleaner. (you have to follow the grain of the metal)

We had a lot of stainless in that place. If we had a slow day or bad storm that killed business we ended up with a clean, shiny store because I'd get bored.

It irritated the heck out of me when my parents hired a cleaning company to do our house once a month and one day one of the cleaners they sent was cleaning the stainless wrong. She was scrubbing the stainless against the grain with one of those green scouring pads that you use on ovens and pans that have cooked on food. Scratched a big spot on the front of the fridge. (grrrr!!!!!) She did it to the microwave too. You can still see the scratch. Ticked me off to no end.

The only thing I dont like about stainless steel, is that you cant put magnets on it. They wont stick, but then again, if they did they'd probably scratch the heck out of the stainless. My mini fridge that I used to keep Copaxone in has a fake stainless steel front to it. You can stick magnets to it, and you dont have to use stainless cleaner on it to keep it shiny.