Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Voluntary Smoke-Out...


Any of you ever tried the self-cleaning feature on your oven?

As you know, we have been in a variety of apartments over the last 4 or so years. Imagine my surprise upon moving last month to find that the oven in my apartment (that I had lived in for 6 months) had a self-cleaning function.

Clearly this conveys the appliance standard I have been accustomed to.

Well, we were moving out, so my very helpful Mother-In-Law (who wouldn't let me clean the kitchen or bathroom saying the bleach fumes would probably not be so great for grandchild #6) started the self-clean function.

Now first let me say that while I am not a meticulously clean cook, I am by no means messy. I clean up after myself and during the cooking process as well.

However, smoke started POURING out of the oven. I was upstairs packing my clothes and wondered why I was looking through hazy air. I started coughing and my eyes started to water. Mind you, my bedroom door was closed and the window open.

I meander downstairs to see what the heck is going on, and Lance and my MIL are busy fanning the air away from the smoke detector so it won't go off, opening windows and starting fans. We have 4 fans, but that wasn't enough, so we borrowed 3 more from the next door neighbor.

Bubbalu was napping so we put towels at the bottom of the door so his bedroom air wouldn't get too smoky. I went in and checked on him later, his fan being on and the window open worked great...his room was the least smokey in the entire house.

So, that being my first experience with self-cleaning ovens, I was wary to try mine out today. I NEEDED to use it though, as I had a messy bake-over that required my attention.

I am happy to report there was no smoke and only a minimal chemically smell that the owners manual said to expect for the first few times using the feature.

Still, I decided the minimal chemically smell warranted an entire morning and most of the afternoon of sitting outside in the sun watching Bubbalu enjoy his pool rather than us tempt fate by being inside and, you know, doing HOUSEWORK or something equally worthwhile.

So, I think I'll be cleaning my oven on a weekly basis, but only on the really sunny days...

A

3 comments :

  1. Too funny. I used my self-cleaning oven today too. The kids sniffing, wrinkling their noses, and asking what I was cooking. Ha ha.
    Oven cleaning is the bane of my existence. So I am glad for this feature.

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  2. I think if you "clean" it often enough, it's not so bad when you DO. So that sounds like a great plan to me!

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  3. Glad it worked out better this time around! The only time I used it was back when we were selling our condo and Nat and I were hiding things in the oven. Well Preggo Meggo completely forgot about the hiding spot and turned it on to bake cookies to bring...to your house actually! (You may remember this!) So the plastic tupperware melted onto my good ole frying pan and dripped into my oven. So neither of us could be in this house smelling those toxins, so we headed over to your place with every window open and the self-cleaner on!!! Good thing our fire alarm didn't go off, lol!

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