Melted plastic tray in the oven. Saved by baking soda!

This is why you should NEVER – EVER – store plastic in your oven. Metal or heat-proof glass containers, yes, but plastic? Repeat after me: Do not store anything plastic in the oven. Don’t. You think you’ll remember, but one time – and it only takes one time – you won’t.

This is also why you should ALWAYS keep a big container of baking soda handy. Large handfuls of baking soda will smother a fire with a lot less of a mess than a fire extinguisher. While the fire might have burned out by itself – eventually – in the (electric) oven, the fumes might have be poisonous – they were pretty obnoxious even though we caught the fire early. I am sure it would have been a real mess (and a 911 call) if that had been a gas oven though…

And if you must ask. No, those photos were not taken at my house. They were taken at the house of a lady – who shall remain nameless - and of whom we were guests for a couple of days recently.

I was told that once the plastic cooled off and hardened, it just lifted off the floor of the oven and off the rack.

Nonetheless,  say after me: “don’t store plastic in the oven and go buy a really large box of baking soda NOW”