Cleaning the Oven

 I haven't posted since JANUARY?!  Well, what can I say - without any office nonsense added to the fact I rarely leave the house these days there isn't very much to talk about.  Well, at least not anything anyone would want to hear about.

At any rate, I came here to announce that my oven is clean!

It seems like such an insignificant announcement.  But it's really not because we have never, ever in the entirety of our marriage used the self-cleaning feature on any of our ovens.  Why?  Because The Husband, also known as The Resident Nervous Nellie, once read a post about someone who used it and it ruined her oven.

So, because of this I'd put off cleaning the oven (counter-intuitive, I know) until it was so gross that I couldn't stand it.  And I'd spend hours on my knees with my head in the oven scouring.  And even at that, it never got completely clean.

When I made some muffins the other day, I noticed that the oven had once again reached an unacceptable level of grime.  And tried to drum up the fortitude and determination to get it cleaned.

And the mere thought of it exhausted me.  So, I made an executive decision and announced that I was going to use the self-cleaning feature.  The Husband was aghast.  So, I asked him if he had it in him to clean it.  The answer, of course, was no.  He once again brought up the poor woman whose oven was ruined.  And I pointed out that these features have to be safe or they wouldn't be allowed to be features and that most likely, that woman's oven was either a lemon or she did something she shouldn't have.

So I started the self-cleaning feature - I knew that the oven would get extremely hot and that there would most likely be fumes from all the gunk getting burnt off (there was) but what I did not expect was that it would take 4 hours!  Had I known that, I would have timed it better (say, after lunch.  Needless to say, our lunch that day was delayed by about two hours).

Considering how grimy that oven was, I wasn't expecting much when I opened the oven to wipe everything up after it had cooled down.  However, while it's not completely perfect the oven is almost pristine.  So much so, that every time I walk in the kitchen I take a little peek just to admire the cleanliness.  It's the little things in life, y'all.  You can bet that I will never find myself on my knees scrubbing that oven again.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to clean between the glass on the door without having to take the whole door apart.