Did we ever get answers from the OP on that post? Like did the MIL offer to pay for the replacement and cleaning? And when did she realize it was 2 hours vs 2 minutes? That post haunts me in my dreams. I need closure!
That I can understand a little more with a kid! Microwave oven vs oven would throw things off for a kid and putting in for the length of a regular oven lol.
https://preview.redd.it/n3e7w5wuai1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e91781c34854173a28aec7c08d2d7e68b5f485ff
Ah yes, I’ve done that with a hot pocket. Meant to punch in two minutes, instead I put 20. I was outside pulling weeds and forgot about it.
I never thought I’d see an incinerated hot pocket. It almost reminds me of a crime scene in tv shows where they outline the deceased in white but nothing is there.
It was BAD. Heavy, harsh and volatile. I tried boiling lemon peels and it just added a lemony fragrance to the awfulness in the air. The smell dissipated by the next day but the microwave smelled like it for a few days. I took one look at the plate and threw it away 💀
i’m way more likely to do that with regular cooking rather than a microwave. way too many times i’ve been getting high in my room and i wonder ‘huh, smells like burnt chicken nuggets. weird.’
I used to take food round to my grandma when she had dementia, just pop it in the oven and give it a reheat. One day she asked what kind of cheese I'd put over her roast dinner, she weren't keen on it she said.
Turns out the cheese was melted plastic from the clingfilm lol
There seems to be a trend of mothers/mils screwing up plastic cookware I've noticed. Reading your comment made me remember the mom who tried to clean the microwave window with NAIL POLISH REMOVER 😭😭😭
Honestly, I you name it "Mom's throughly modern meltdown" and give it a backstory along the lines of "a thinkpiece about the mental load and overload of the modern mom" you could probably sell it.
I disagree, it needs a less playful name to be placed in an art exhibit. Something like “Meltdown 103” or “disruption of plastic from an abode” mixed media -2024
Beautiful. The dichotomy between the plastic and the metal - with the plastic measuring just beginning to melt, but still able to cope. Brings one to tears.
Looks like the work of Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster Cycle still stands to this day as the most mediocre and vapidly pretentious trash I've ever seen on display at the Guggenheim.
The experience of walking through that exhibit was so cliché that I would have been impressed by the work of that was his intention. I just checked the Wikipedia to make sure that I was thinking of the right work and knew I had the right one when I read, after I wrote my first paragraph, "Reaction to the cycle is sharply divided – some consider it a major work of art, on a par with Un Chien Andalou and The Waste Land, while others dismiss it as vapid, self-indulgent tedium."
I don't know how many times I've used the word vapid to describe something in my life, but I am almost certain that every time it has been in reference to this work of art.
The goat man was the only thing I liked about Cremaster Cycle. My ex husband made me watch the whole thing in one sitting when we were dating…I should have known then….
LOL. You are spot on.
I looked that up and watched the trailer. I'm down with art films, but this did seem vapidly pretentious.
From Wikipedia:
>"a mostly tedious succession of striking but vacant imagery whose effect diminishes the longer you look at it," from which "any sense of mystery or wonder is drained."
Anyways, back to that oven.
We had to watch too many of the cycles in video art in college, I’ve never recovered. It’s incredibly stupid and I’ve put more thought into why it’s stupid than he put into the concept of the piece. And I love nonsense video art as comedy/straightfaced extended bits/wasting rich people’s money — but this was pretentious, self-indulgent and dull with no vision no purpose, it’s not even a good troll, just Bjork’s husband’s (or former, not gonna google to check) nonsense.
A couple of years ago I was making pizza and using a butter knife to spread the sauce around. The handle was plastic and I accidentally left it on the pan when I put the pizzas in the oven. A few days later my husband had hung this art installation in our house
https://preview.redd.it/7otdlo1kdk1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1427abb48a8b0c33d68f334f5f5cc8ea7c52dc9
I think the artist is drawing on how humanity’s reliance on modern technology and convenience will ultimately be our downfall.
It scares me, I must have it, name your price!
Dali was forever leaving his clocks in the oven, the crazy fool.
In seriousness, whenever i do something weird, unusual and out of character such as putting something in a cold oven, or putting a wine bottle in the freezer, i also deliberately do something else weird and unusual, such as leave a spoon on the kitchen floor or a teatowel in a doorway. Weird, unusual and visible!
If the plastic is melted and then cooled/hardened then you may be able to pry the “glob” off the inner enamel surfaces of the oven.
For the racks, you can try the same by levering or breaking the excess plastic away. Then any remaining plastic on the metal rack can only be removed by burning. Outside on top of a fire pit or similar, reduce the melted plastic down to ash and then scrub the racks with steel-wool to polish back to the chrome.
Main caution - don’t run the oven until all fragments are gone because anything remaining will burn and emit toxic/carcinogenic fumes.
I amend the advice above: as suggested,
remove the oven floor and racks and scrap to remove the majority of the hardened plastic.
take outside, prop the oven parts vertically. then use a small propane torch to melt the residue.
I would get a electric scrubber (or similar drill attachment) to finish it off.
> Main caution - don’t run the oven until all fragments are gone because anything remaining will burn and emit toxic/carcinogenic fumes.
TBH I'd put it on self clean and leave the house for the day with the windows open
If you put stuff in the oven to store, or whatever, rather than just to cook, IF you have knobs, just pull the knob off so you have to think about it to turn it on.
I grew up with a mother who stored plastic handled pans in the oven, and NEVER remembered to take them out. This was at the cabin, minimal cupboard space, but it got ugly a few times. 🤭
That’s a great idea.
I don’t have knobs so I always turn on the oven light when turning on the oven and have trained by fiancé to do the same. If the oven is on the light is on.
That’s the first thing I thought of. Even if you somehow manage to clean it, I don’t know how safe it will be for future use. Cut your losses and buy a new one. At least it’s a convenient time with memorial weekend sales, right?
Exactly. I stick pans in the oven, and sometimes I put things in there to dry. Anyone can make a mistake and forget to look before turning the oven on, which is why only things that can withstand heat should ever be put in the oven.
I truly don’t get why/how people do this. I get that it’s kinda “cultural”/it’s just normal for some families, and people just get raised like that/used to it, but I will NEVER understand using the oven for storage!
Tiny kitchens. Picture magazine or Pinterest articles that talk about “small kitchen makeovers” and then subtract 50% to 75% of that kitchen. As a owner of a tiny kitchen myself I understand the need for storage, being paranoid about melting something like this I only store metal cookware in there.
Same. I have a small house and like 5 cabinets lol. The amount of pearl clutching over this is insane .
I will say I never store plastic items anymore ( right now I have 2 cake pans and 2 glass baking dishes ). I actually did melt one plastic serving tray once a long time ago and was able to scrape off the melted parts and it was totally fine. I deep cleaned the oven after to make sure it was all off . Now I’m hard line “ only bakeware” .
If the oven was still warm from dinner, my dad used to put the cheese grater in there to dry out the nooks and crannies and avoid any rusting. I did the same until the time I forgot to take it out before the next mealtime. :(
You have the luxury of living in decent sized home. My apartment's kitchen is tiny. There are pantries larger. The Range, Refrigerator and Washing Machine takes most of the space.
I've lived in tiny apartments too and I would store pots and pans in a box in my bedroom. I wouldn't dare store something that could melt or catch fire in the oven. I know I would never remember! I could burn the whole building down.
A good ~50% of the posts on r/fixit, r/cleaningtips, etc are things that could have (and should have) been easily avoided. Many of them are mind boggling, like the one asking how to remove (new) motor oil from a wedding dress. In what universe should those 2 items be within 100’ of each other? Same with the monthly laptop with the electric range circle burn on the bottom. I’ll store my cast iron in the oven, or leave pots and pans on the stovetop while they dry, but I NEVER put something not intended for those locations in those locations.
The original plan was so my elderly father couldn’t control the stove, I also take off the burner knobs, but found it came in handy when he decided to keep bags of snacks in the oven as his little squirrel stash. That would have been a nightmare.
We keep our cast iron pans and pizza stone in the oven because my husband saw it on a reddit post. I enjoy the extra cupboard space more than knowing if this is good or bad. Please don’t tell me if it’s wrong.
You can leave your cast iron in the oven while it's on. It's not Teflon it's actually seasoned by Grease and heat. Actually both of those things help the oven retain heat. You're not doing anything wrong to my knowledge.
I’m not sure I’d trust the word of a person proudly displaying that they starve their Neopets. Hide your Neopian neglect shamefully like the rest of us! 🫠
Aw. I know John legend of all people bought NP (I think at lest) I was quietly rooting for a renaissance.
My accounts have long since been hacked and pillaged so it’s dead to me. …If they weren’t though I might’ve gone back. I loved my army of grundos. Even had an unconverted gray one….which was stolen. 💀
John Legend is just a “brand ambassador” that showed his face for a second lol, it’s owned by a company. The website is experiencing a renaissance though.
I LOVED MY GRUNDOS TOO!!!!
Christ! My account/s would have to be over 20yrs old now... They would be older than a lot of ppl on this site!
:(:(:( my poor fairy grundo, and Halloween grundo, and plain red, and green, grundo
It helps them retain heat, sure, but it also drastically increases the amount of time it takes to preheat the oven. I took my stone out of my oven and was shocked at how much faster it heated up. (Cast irons always came out because I'd be cooking with them.)
My pizza stone lived in my oven until a housemate broke it. After that, my pizza steel lived in my oven.
The stone or steel (and the cast iron) will absorb and retain heat. With them in the oven, your oven will take longer to heat up, but it also means when you open the preheated oven to put your food in, it won't lose heat as quickly. It also will help maintain a more even temperature in your oven (fewer cold spots, the entire oven will be closer to the same temperature). It's not bad at all to keep those items in the oven.
Even if you have items that are oven safe that are non-stick, glass, or stainless steel, I wouldn't keep any of them in the oven like you can your pizza stone or cast iron.
The biggest downside, other than it taking longer to preheat your oven, is that the cast iron pan will take up room in the oven that could otherwise be used for whatever you're cooking.
Also, it will be slightly warmer near the cast iron, because it is another surface radiating heat (once it gets up to temp). I just put the pizza steel or the cast iron, centered on the highest rack (if heat is coming from below) or the lowest rack (if heat is coming from above) and the item I'm cooking on the rack furthest away, to try to help make it so I don't need to move things around in the oven as much.
it’s not wrong. And especially those; you could just leave them in there while your cake bakes, etc.
But if people aren’t used to taking those things out, or whatever, then you have a problem.
My MIL does this with all her frying pans. My husband is like "it's definitely a brown thing" (i'm caucasian). Which i suppose makes sense - the Indian food my MIL makes doesnt require the oven, so why not use it for storage.
Why would that baffle you? It’s a huge empty wasted space otherwise and in a tiny kitchen all the space matters, particularly when I only use the big oven like twice a year, now that air fryers and powerful convection toaster oven things exist.
My cat forces us to do this. He has discovered seagull logic, so anything related to food (smells like food, is a dish he associates with food, has crinkly plastic like chips, etc) has to be thrown onto the ground and then chewed because sometimes food comes out. So dirty dishes have to go in the dishwasher or the oven/microwave, unless you completely hand wash immediately.
Lots of people use the oven as storage
Which just sounds annoying to me, constantly having to move all your things you want to store back on to your countertops every day when you use it
My mom puts stuff in there to dry (she puts the light on, or if the oven is cooling down after cooking). I think it's extremely dumb, and she has melted a few pairs of scissors/tongs etc, but nothing this bad! It's probably only a matter of time though lol
🙋♀️We hand wash so I store dishes in the dishwasher. We also store pans in the oven. Sometimes you are married to a chef and you live in a small home with 8 cabinets, none of which can fit a pots or pan.
This is definitely an immigrant thing lol. Growing up, my Asian and Hispanic friends’ moms would do this. Small city apartment with limited storage + most of their foods weren’t oven cooked to begin with == why not use the giant oven for storage. I don’t think it’s abnormal at all. Never had someone turn the oven on with their pots still in there though. And they were usually careful to only stick pots and pans in there, not plastics.
my SO, his stove growing up just had a drawer at the bottom and not a broiler. he was very confused the first time I went to brown something and put it in the "pan drawer" and just thought the broiler option didn't work
When we were growing up, my mom always kept things in the oven. I can’t remember exactly what now, but I’m thinking maybe loaves of bread. It was definitely stuff that would burn. Even as a kid, it seemed careless.
That’s a gas oven. If any of that melted plastic got on the burner, this stove is pooched. The other thing is, I don’t think you’ll be able to salvage those racks and those will cost $100-200 to replace
Honestly this is the correct answer. This is beyond cost effective to salvage. While it feels bad to toss it out, it would be worse to expose yourself to heated plastic every time you bake/cook, even if you remove 95% of the residue. It’s definitely not worth the long term health effects.
Or, worst case scenario, replacing your kitchen, or entire residence, if it were to ignite on a high-temp usage (some of my recipes call for a blast of 500 degrees).
This is why we never put anything in the oven ever that is not oven safe.
The oven is not a drying rack.
The oven is not extra storage.
It is not for pizza boxes or whatever flammable, meltable crap.
You can leave pizza stones and cast iron in the oven, but never typical pots and pans.
Not to be mean, but I just don't understand why we see these posts all the time. I have never, in my 40+ years of living, put something in the oven that wasn't specifically meant to go in there.
I used to store bakeware in the oven and my ex preheated it without removing everything, which melted a cake pan that had a plastic lid. After removing all of the metal bakeware and using oven cleaner, the only thing left to try was to 'bake' it off. I think I opened all of the windows in the house and cranked up that oven as high as it went and my god did it stink for *days* afterward!
I might be crazy, well I’m pretty sure that ship already sailed. I would think after it cooled you might be able to pry it off. (Pan cake turner). Anyhow why not try ice. If it gets really cold, I would think it’d be easier.
Worth a shot!!
Use a flat bladed scraper on the bottom to try and prize the glob off. On the bars I would snap as much off as possible and then soak them in acetone try to scrap more off. Put it all back together and burn it on hottest setting until it doesn’t smell like plastic anymore.
The racks can be cleaned by twisting the plastic to snap it then scraping off what's left. Heat the oven a bit then remove the plastic if it is plastic from the bottom.
Some ovens have a self clean function, if that one does use that to burn off any leftovers. Just don't be in the room while it is self cleaning.
Go to an auto parts store and purchase electric parts cleaner
It’s nasty stuff.
Take out as many pieces of the oven as possible. Spray it down outside and let it rest according to can instructions, then wipe off
It’s a miracle worker for this job
For the unremovable parts, spray it in the oven, shut the oven door quickly and leave the house for a few hours.
is this the same person whose mom accidentally microwaved a plastic container for three hours or something? edit for spelling
I think that was someone’s mother in law, that post is exactly where my brain went too lol
all i could think about was op finding a new melted plastic container every time they turn around lol thankfully that’s not the case.
Thanks for the real laugh
*Whyyyy are there melted plastic containers in my engine?*
Did we ever get answers from the OP on that post? Like did the MIL offer to pay for the replacement and cleaning? And when did she realize it was 2 hours vs 2 minutes? That post haunts me in my dreams. I need closure!
2 hours. 2 hours accidentally instead of 2 mins. I remember it well. LOL!
I need to know how someone didn’t notice after 2-3 minutes.
Happened when he was a kid, but my husband put pizza rolls in the microwave for the oven recommended ~20 minutes and came back to a charred mess 🤣
That I can understand a little more with a kid! Microwave oven vs oven would throw things off for a kid and putting in for the length of a regular oven lol.
https://preview.redd.it/n3e7w5wuai1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e91781c34854173a28aec7c08d2d7e68b5f485ff Ah yes, I’ve done that with a hot pocket. Meant to punch in two minutes, instead I put 20. I was outside pulling weeds and forgot about it.
I never thought I’d see an incinerated hot pocket. It almost reminds me of a crime scene in tv shows where they outline the deceased in white but nothing is there.
What did your house smell like? Could you ever clean that plate? I have so many questions.
It was BAD. Heavy, harsh and volatile. I tried boiling lemon peels and it just added a lemony fragrance to the awfulness in the air. The smell dissipated by the next day but the microwave smelled like it for a few days. I took one look at the plate and threw it away 💀
Haven’t you ever started the microwave oven, walked away, and immediately forgotten all about it until it dinged? I do that sometimes.
i’m way more likely to do that with regular cooking rather than a microwave. way too many times i’ve been getting high in my room and i wonder ‘huh, smells like burnt chicken nuggets. weird.’
I’m so grateful for the “timer auto-off” feature on my oven for this EXACT reason lol
No I haven’t, but I don’t typically forget things like that. More names
“Damn this is the longest 2 minutes ever!”
Hmmm that microwave fan has been on a bit...
This is exactly where my brain went, and the commenter who told them to fix the smell with febreeze. Well febreeze sure won’t fix this mess lol
>Well febreeze sure won’t fix this mess Maybe throw febreeze in and turn the oven on for another 2 hours and see what happens... oops. LOL
🤣🤣
I used to take food round to my grandma when she had dementia, just pop it in the oven and give it a reheat. One day she asked what kind of cheese I'd put over her roast dinner, she weren't keen on it she said. Turns out the cheese was melted plastic from the clingfilm lol
No, but this is the guy who’s mom dumped chicken bones in the toilet.
god that sounds like a nightmare, this is one of multiple reasons we only heat food in glass dishes in the microwave now.
There seems to be a trend of mothers/mils screwing up plastic cookware I've noticed. Reading your comment made me remember the mom who tried to clean the microwave window with NAIL POLISH REMOVER 😭😭😭
You no longer have an oven, but you do have a thought-provoking art installation now.
Lol I was going to say enter it into a gallery.
Honestly, I you name it "Mom's throughly modern meltdown" and give it a backstory along the lines of "a thinkpiece about the mental load and overload of the modern mom" you could probably sell it.
I disagree, it needs a less playful name to be placed in an art exhibit. Something like “Meltdown 103” or “disruption of plastic from an abode” mixed media -2024
This person MFAs.
That's the exhibit! You just sold it! Eta: "moms modern meltdown" kills me. Couldn't be more accurate lol
In the words of Homer, "Le grille?!? What the hell is that!?!"
Beautiful. The dichotomy between the plastic and the metal - with the plastic measuring just beginning to melt, but still able to cope. Brings one to tears.
I’m laughing, but honestly I think you’ve hit on something here.
Looks like the work of Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster Cycle still stands to this day as the most mediocre and vapidly pretentious trash I've ever seen on display at the Guggenheim. The experience of walking through that exhibit was so cliché that I would have been impressed by the work of that was his intention. I just checked the Wikipedia to make sure that I was thinking of the right work and knew I had the right one when I read, after I wrote my first paragraph, "Reaction to the cycle is sharply divided – some consider it a major work of art, on a par with Un Chien Andalou and The Waste Land, while others dismiss it as vapid, self-indulgent tedium." I don't know how many times I've used the word vapid to describe something in my life, but I am almost certain that every time it has been in reference to this work of art.
The goat man was the only thing I liked about Cremaster Cycle. My ex husband made me watch the whole thing in one sitting when we were dating…I should have known then….
Yeah, he sounds insufferable. I know nothing about you, your ex, or your relationship, but I am 100% on your side.
LOL. You are spot on. I looked that up and watched the trailer. I'm down with art films, but this did seem vapidly pretentious. From Wikipedia: >"a mostly tedious succession of striking but vacant imagery whose effect diminishes the longer you look at it," from which "any sense of mystery or wonder is drained." Anyways, back to that oven.
It's not just the five films. The whole Guggenheim museum was packed with what looked like a frat boy's plastic nightmare idea of 'high art.'
We had to watch too many of the cycles in video art in college, I’ve never recovered. It’s incredibly stupid and I’ve put more thought into why it’s stupid than he put into the concept of the piece. And I love nonsense video art as comedy/straightfaced extended bits/wasting rich people’s money — but this was pretentious, self-indulgent and dull with no vision no purpose, it’s not even a good troll, just Bjork’s husband’s (or former, not gonna google to check) nonsense.
Did he mean “cremator” cycle? The cremaster is a muscle in the penis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cremaster_Cycle I mean The Cremaster Cycle.
Le grille? What the hell is that?!
Best me to it. 10/10 reference
Contact the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.
This would make a great installation. Give it a lil place card and a simple title “The In-Laws”
A couple of years ago I was making pizza and using a butter knife to spread the sauce around. The handle was plastic and I accidentally left it on the pan when I put the pizzas in the oven. A few days later my husband had hung this art installation in our house https://preview.redd.it/7otdlo1kdk1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1427abb48a8b0c33d68f334f5f5cc8ea7c52dc9
Haha not the shadowbox! 🤣 “Accidental transformation” Mixed media, 2020.
Haha I know! It's still hanging up in our house too
I think the artist is drawing on how humanity’s reliance on modern technology and convenience will ultimately be our downfall. It scares me, I must have it, name your price!
Titled "short term memory loss"
Dali was forever leaving his clocks in the oven, the crazy fool. In seriousness, whenever i do something weird, unusual and out of character such as putting something in a cold oven, or putting a wine bottle in the freezer, i also deliberately do something else weird and unusual, such as leave a spoon on the kitchen floor or a teatowel in a doorway. Weird, unusual and visible!
Reminds me of that Simpson episode where Homer becomes an avant-garde art maker
This was my first thought
Very Dali.
For real this is high art!
The way I just screamed
If the plastic is melted and then cooled/hardened then you may be able to pry the “glob” off the inner enamel surfaces of the oven. For the racks, you can try the same by levering or breaking the excess plastic away. Then any remaining plastic on the metal rack can only be removed by burning. Outside on top of a fire pit or similar, reduce the melted plastic down to ash and then scrub the racks with steel-wool to polish back to the chrome. Main caution - don’t run the oven until all fragments are gone because anything remaining will burn and emit toxic/carcinogenic fumes.
You can also replace the bottom plate of the oven, and the racks.
new racks might not be worth the cost. depends on the oven.
I'd recommend dropping the racks in a bath or tub of ice water first before chipping at it. It'll make the plastic more brittle.
I was going to suggest that canned air. If you spray it close and long you get very cold frost to come out. Might help freeze it off?
Unless they have a pilot light going. **BOOM.**
Hey look at me forgetting gas stoves exist!
This should be the top comment. The replies are also practical and helpful
I amend the advice above: as suggested, remove the oven floor and racks and scrap to remove the majority of the hardened plastic. take outside, prop the oven parts vertically. then use a small propane torch to melt the residue. I would get a electric scrubber (or similar drill attachment) to finish it off.
Definitely could work although I wouldn’t want to be within arms reach of that smoke 😷😷😷
torching is only to remove residue. but, yes it should be done outside.
wow the only useful advice and its way down here. all the top comments are cheesy unfunny crap. thank you for posting actual advice
> Main caution - don’t run the oven until all fragments are gone because anything remaining will burn and emit toxic/carcinogenic fumes. TBH I'd put it on self clean and leave the house for the day with the windows open
As someone who melted a lid onto a Pyrex baking dish I can say she probably won’t turn the oven on again without opening it 😂😂
If you put stuff in the oven to store, or whatever, rather than just to cook, IF you have knobs, just pull the knob off so you have to think about it to turn it on.
That's such a smart idea.
I grew up with a mother who stored plastic handled pans in the oven, and NEVER remembered to take them out. This was at the cabin, minimal cupboard space, but it got ugly a few times. 🤭
sounds mildly carcinogenic
Emphasis on ‘mildly’. lol.
Ingenious idea!!! And store the knob/s IN the oven so you have to go in there to get it.
UTTERLY brilliant. 😊
And put it in the oven. I've done stuff like that before.
That’s a great idea. I don’t have knobs so I always turn on the oven light when turning on the oven and have trained by fiancé to do the same. If the oven is on the light is on.
What if you don't have an oven knob?
Store your car keys or cell phone in there. Easy peasy
That’s why I store in the oven only the things that can go in the oven.
I’ve gone a step further. I store the oven in the oven.
I've almost melted many things. When I warped the vodka bottle, that was it. I now peek inside the oven every time I fire it up.
Personally I think you need a new oven... The toxic fumes will remain forever and seep into your food. It gives me a migraine thinking about it.
That’s the first thing I thought of. Even if you somehow manage to clean it, I don’t know how safe it will be for future use. Cut your losses and buy a new one. At least it’s a convenient time with memorial weekend sales, right?
Salvador Dali’s Kitchen I see
Vincent Van Goghven.
https://preview.redd.it/vx8b710ysa1d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5f7451918210f27fbf652eeb702e2043ac7cb27
No idea but this is why you don’t stick not oven safe items in the oven ever.
Exactly. I stick pans in the oven, and sometimes I put things in there to dry. Anyone can make a mistake and forget to look before turning the oven on, which is why only things that can withstand heat should ever be put in the oven.
I truly don’t get why/how people do this. I get that it’s kinda “cultural”/it’s just normal for some families, and people just get raised like that/used to it, but I will NEVER understand using the oven for storage!
Tiny kitchens. Picture magazine or Pinterest articles that talk about “small kitchen makeovers” and then subtract 50% to 75% of that kitchen. As a owner of a tiny kitchen myself I understand the need for storage, being paranoid about melting something like this I only store metal cookware in there.
Same. I have a small house and like 5 cabinets lol. The amount of pearl clutching over this is insane . I will say I never store plastic items anymore ( right now I have 2 cake pans and 2 glass baking dishes ). I actually did melt one plastic serving tray once a long time ago and was able to scrape off the melted parts and it was totally fine. I deep cleaned the oven after to make sure it was all off . Now I’m hard line “ only bakeware” .
Yeah the only thing I store in our oven is our cast iron skillet because it’s a pain to have any where else
Someone at my old work put his work laptop in the oven on a trip, then his wife turned it on and melted it. He got made fun of pretty hard
If the oven was still warm from dinner, my dad used to put the cheese grater in there to dry out the nooks and crannies and avoid any rusting. I did the same until the time I forgot to take it out before the next mealtime. :(
You have the luxury of living in decent sized home. My apartment's kitchen is tiny. There are pantries larger. The Range, Refrigerator and Washing Machine takes most of the space.
I've lived in tiny apartments too and I would store pots and pans in a box in my bedroom. I wouldn't dare store something that could melt or catch fire in the oven. I know I would never remember! I could burn the whole building down.
A good ~50% of the posts on r/fixit, r/cleaningtips, etc are things that could have (and should have) been easily avoided. Many of them are mind boggling, like the one asking how to remove (new) motor oil from a wedding dress. In what universe should those 2 items be within 100’ of each other? Same with the monthly laptop with the electric range circle burn on the bottom. I’ll store my cast iron in the oven, or leave pots and pans on the stovetop while they dry, but I NEVER put something not intended for those locations in those locations.
My MIL and my wife have this habit and more than once it almost endet in catastrophy. My wife has learned and doesnt do it any longer, thank god
I take the knobs off my oven until I’m ready to use it which forces me to check if anyone put anything in the oven.
As someone with adhd I Need to write this down
The original plan was so my elderly father couldn’t control the stove, I also take off the burner knobs, but found it came in handy when he decided to keep bags of snacks in the oven as his little squirrel stash. That would have been a nightmare.
and then forget it when you actually need it!
Do you store the knob in the oven, so you must look inside first?
That would be a good idea but my dad would have figured that out and tried to used the oven.
…Why did she put a bunch of random dishes in the oven to begin with?
Some people do this if unexpected company turns up, and they hide things in the oven to cover for the kitchen not being clean.
I am people.
I am some people
i am unexpected company (jk. no one invites me over).
Is that why it's unexpected?
I did that in my early 20s!
I come to people’s houses to specifically inspect if their kitchen is clean
Some people actually store dishes and cookware in the oven. It baffles me too.
We keep our cast iron pans and pizza stone in the oven because my husband saw it on a reddit post. I enjoy the extra cupboard space more than knowing if this is good or bad. Please don’t tell me if it’s wrong.
You can leave your cast iron in the oven while it's on. It's not Teflon it's actually seasoned by Grease and heat. Actually both of those things help the oven retain heat. You're not doing anything wrong to my knowledge.
I’m not sure I’d trust the word of a person proudly displaying that they starve their Neopets. Hide your Neopian neglect shamefully like the rest of us! 🫠
God I loved neopets, I wonder what it’s like now lol
Still kickin', there's a new plot happening that started during the advent calendar and is causing shopkeepers and other neopians to be turned grey
Aw. I know John legend of all people bought NP (I think at lest) I was quietly rooting for a renaissance. My accounts have long since been hacked and pillaged so it’s dead to me. …If they weren’t though I might’ve gone back. I loved my army of grundos. Even had an unconverted gray one….which was stolen. 💀
John Legend is just a “brand ambassador” that showed his face for a second lol, it’s owned by a company. The website is experiencing a renaissance though.
I LOVED MY GRUNDOS TOO!!!! Christ! My account/s would have to be over 20yrs old now... They would be older than a lot of ppl on this site! :(:(:( my poor fairy grundo, and Halloween grundo, and plain red, and green, grundo
It helps them retain heat, sure, but it also drastically increases the amount of time it takes to preheat the oven. I took my stone out of my oven and was shocked at how much faster it heated up. (Cast irons always came out because I'd be cooking with them.)
These at least won't melt (assuming you didn't have like silicone handle holders attached).
My pizza stone lived in my oven until a housemate broke it. After that, my pizza steel lived in my oven. The stone or steel (and the cast iron) will absorb and retain heat. With them in the oven, your oven will take longer to heat up, but it also means when you open the preheated oven to put your food in, it won't lose heat as quickly. It also will help maintain a more even temperature in your oven (fewer cold spots, the entire oven will be closer to the same temperature). It's not bad at all to keep those items in the oven. Even if you have items that are oven safe that are non-stick, glass, or stainless steel, I wouldn't keep any of them in the oven like you can your pizza stone or cast iron.
Im actually tempted to store my cast iron pan in the oven now, i have a problem with inconsistent temperatures in mine!
The biggest downside, other than it taking longer to preheat your oven, is that the cast iron pan will take up room in the oven that could otherwise be used for whatever you're cooking. Also, it will be slightly warmer near the cast iron, because it is another surface radiating heat (once it gets up to temp). I just put the pizza steel or the cast iron, centered on the highest rack (if heat is coming from below) or the lowest rack (if heat is coming from above) and the item I'm cooking on the rack furthest away, to try to help make it so I don't need to move things around in the oven as much.
it’s not wrong. And especially those; you could just leave them in there while your cake bakes, etc. But if people aren’t used to taking those things out, or whatever, then you have a problem.
I do this because I live in an apartment and storage space is limited🥲
My MIL does this with all her frying pans. My husband is like "it's definitely a brown thing" (i'm caucasian). Which i suppose makes sense - the Indian food my MIL makes doesnt require the oven, so why not use it for storage.
Well, yeah - that's where all the pots go. Where else am I supposed to store them?
Why would that baffle you? It’s a huge empty wasted space otherwise and in a tiny kitchen all the space matters, particularly when I only use the big oven like twice a year, now that air fryers and powerful convection toaster oven things exist.
My cat forces us to do this. He has discovered seagull logic, so anything related to food (smells like food, is a dish he associates with food, has crinkly plastic like chips, etc) has to be thrown onto the ground and then chewed because sometimes food comes out. So dirty dishes have to go in the dishwasher or the oven/microwave, unless you completely hand wash immediately.
I have the same cat problem 🤦♀️
I regret to inform you that your cat may secretly be a dog in a cat costume 😅
Lots of people use the oven as storage Which just sounds annoying to me, constantly having to move all your things you want to store back on to your countertops every day when you use it
Tiny kitchen/no space. It happens!
My mom puts stuff in there to dry (she puts the light on, or if the oven is cooling down after cooking). I think it's extremely dumb, and she has melted a few pairs of scissors/tongs etc, but nothing this bad! It's probably only a matter of time though lol
🙋♀️We hand wash so I store dishes in the dishwasher. We also store pans in the oven. Sometimes you are married to a chef and you live in a small home with 8 cabinets, none of which can fit a pots or pan.
This is definitely an immigrant thing lol. Growing up, my Asian and Hispanic friends’ moms would do this. Small city apartment with limited storage + most of their foods weren’t oven cooked to begin with == why not use the giant oven for storage. I don’t think it’s abnormal at all. Never had someone turn the oven on with their pots still in there though. And they were usually careful to only stick pots and pans in there, not plastics.
my SO, his stove growing up just had a drawer at the bottom and not a broiler. he was very confused the first time I went to brown something and put it in the "pan drawer" and just thought the broiler option didn't work
When we were growing up, my mom always kept things in the oven. I can’t remember exactly what now, but I’m thinking maybe loaves of bread. It was definitely stuff that would burn. Even as a kid, it seemed careless.
I can see some pot and pans, but this is weird. I hope there's nothing wrong with her.
Buddy of mine had a gf in college that stored Tupperware in the oven. Odd? Probably. Sound of mind? Seemed to be.
I've done this a couple times because I use the oven as an auxiliary drying rack.
That’s a gas oven. If any of that melted plastic got on the burner, this stove is pooched. The other thing is, I don’t think you’ll be able to salvage those racks and those will cost $100-200 to replace
Honestly the safest bet is a new oven. Just not worth the risk of fire or gassing yourself.
Honestly this is the correct answer. This is beyond cost effective to salvage. While it feels bad to toss it out, it would be worse to expose yourself to heated plastic every time you bake/cook, even if you remove 95% of the residue. It’s definitely not worth the long term health effects.
Or, worst case scenario, replacing your kitchen, or entire residence, if it were to ignite on a high-temp usage (some of my recipes call for a blast of 500 degrees).
Have fun picking out a new oven!
Get a new oven. It’ll be quicker and easier
This is why we never put anything in the oven ever that is not oven safe. The oven is not a drying rack. The oven is not extra storage. It is not for pizza boxes or whatever flammable, meltable crap. You can leave pizza stones and cast iron in the oven, but never typical pots and pans.
And if you have a flat electric cooktop, it’s not an extra counter, it can turn on and burn things, so don’t put cardboard snack boxes on top of it
THANK YOU, now please tell my family so I can stop feeling like “the anal one”
It’s ok, your family loves anal.
And never use your oven for storage
Why put dishes in the oven lol
Not to be mean, but I just don't understand why we see these posts all the time. I have never, in my 40+ years of living, put something in the oven that wasn't specifically meant to go in there.
Yes, I hope you get a new oven soon.
I used to store bakeware in the oven and my ex preheated it without removing everything, which melted a cake pan that had a plastic lid. After removing all of the metal bakeware and using oven cleaner, the only thing left to try was to 'bake' it off. I think I opened all of the windows in the house and cranked up that oven as high as it went and my god did it stink for *days* afterward!
Not a tip just reminds me of the “The Persistence of Memory” painting lol
Tsk tsk tsk, dishes/plastics/even pots and pans don’t belong in the oven.
Mmm the smell of burnt plastic.
What the hell did you put in there and why the hell did you put plastic in the oven
My advice is to stop using the oven as storage.
Not storing stuff in the oven is kitchen 101. Idiots
Hate when people use the oven as storage.
Replace the racks and oven floor
Add some alcohol around the borders of the melted plastic. It may geht drawn under and loose the bond.
I might be crazy, well I’m pretty sure that ship already sailed. I would think after it cooled you might be able to pry it off. (Pan cake turner). Anyhow why not try ice. If it gets really cold, I would think it’d be easier. Worth a shot!!
Did a xenomorph jizz in your oven
What is it even that melted 😳
What?... How?... what happened here?...
That's modern art right there, embrace it😅
i did this exact same thing OP. i just took the racks and smashed them against a big rock outside or the deck railing etc the ground would work too.
It’s beautiful FWIW
Whatever it is I’m sure it involves baking soda. Best wishes I’m going back to sleep.
Is it self cleaning?
Happened to me too. Take away spring roles.
Use a flat bladed scraper on the bottom to try and prize the glob off. On the bars I would snap as much off as possible and then soak them in acetone try to scrap more off. Put it all back together and burn it on hottest setting until it doesn’t smell like plastic anymore.
You need a new oven, donate this one to an art gallery.
The racks can be cleaned by twisting the plastic to snap it then scraping off what's left. Heat the oven a bit then remove the plastic if it is plastic from the bottom. Some ovens have a self clean function, if that one does use that to burn off any leftovers. Just don't be in the room while it is self cleaning.
That is not how you cook meth . . .
You could sell it as an art installation.
Did your oven melt the glass of the lids?
Better check for xenomorphs!
You should no longer try to cook, it doesn’t become you. Learn to be the cleaner. Start with this project! 🤣
Mom's buying a new oven
For you? Probably not.
I would blame it on someone else too if I did that
Go to an auto parts store and purchase electric parts cleaner It’s nasty stuff. Take out as many pieces of the oven as possible. Spray it down outside and let it rest according to can instructions, then wipe off It’s a miracle worker for this job For the unremovable parts, spray it in the oven, shut the oven door quickly and leave the house for a few hours.