Self-Cleaning Oven...A God send!

Yes, this is a post on the Self-Cleaning Oven feature. In the 6 years I've owned this oven, not once have I used the SCF (self-cleaning feature, silly!). All these years I've been cleaning that oven by hand scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing to get the goop off. As you can imagine, with that level of work, it didn't get done at all often in the 6 years.

So, I decided to try it the other day. Push a button and 4 hours later its clean? How is that possible? But it IS. For those who may not realize (or maybe I'm the only moron out there who never knew) the SCF basically heats your oven to unheard of levels of heat charring everything in there to ash and then you just wipe it all down when it's done (and cooled off). No chemicals, no products, nuh-in'.

I didn't get any before pictures because I wasn't aware of the magnitude of how awesome the SCF would be-so much that I'd blog about it. But I was so excited about the end result I had to take after pictures.

It was only slightly embarrassing when my husband and his friend walked in to me snapping shots of the inside of my oven. I was too excited to be embarrassed. Of course, my husband was mortified and had to explain why his loco wife was squatting in front of the oven snapping photos like it was a supermodel, "Work it...work it...own it!"

Anyhow. Pics. Here's the best example I have of how dirty it was prior to SCF:

Those are pics of where the oven closes and so it didn't get the heat charred spa treatment. And the racks- which I took out prior to SCF- still with bits of yummy goodness on them. Imagine that hot mess but, like, all over the oven, 'mmmmkay? And I'm trusting you a lot to show you just how completely filthy it was. Please don't judge me.

So, here's the purdy after- with only a quick wipe with damp napkins to take up the main ash. (that's my husband's reflection as he tries to explain to his friend why I'm not yet ready to be institutionalized just because I take pictures of ovens for keepsakes).

Isn't that phenomenal? I mean, who knew I could take 30 seconds to push a button and 4 hours later it would look this good? The only caveat I have was the smell while cleaning was horrible. I mean, it's understandable because it's heating to such a high degree and it's burning off everything so it really smells bad (like somethings smoking or burning) which may worry some but that's the SCF just doing it's job. We just opened the windows and turned on all our fans and within a couple of hours after it cooled it was fine again (no smell).

So, there you have it. My first ever attempt at the self-cleaning oven feature.God bless the person who concocted this feature. Now if only they made that for bathtubs and toilets.