Well, I finally did it

Made a fool of myself, that is.  Friday I was making supper and turned the oven on to cook French Fries. Then started dealing with the meat.  After a few minutes I noticed smoke coming out of the oven. I remembered that I had stored things there to hide them.  Quickly turned the over off.  By that time my screams had brought David to see what was going on.  We opened the oven door and smoke billowed out.  David grabbed a couple of pot holders and pulled the rack out and we rushed it outside with its load of place matts, plastic cutting boards and my jar of pens.  He dropped it down on top of a recycling box.  We turned on the exhaust fans and opened all of the doors and windows, leaving things that way, for the evening and over night ( with the doors closed). Now three days later the smell of smoke appears to be gone.

The place matts are toast, as is the oven rack ( melted plastic from the place matts). The hot metal of the oven rack melted grooves in the top edge of the recycle bin but that isn't a problem.  The plastic has melted onto the racks  itself and we won't ever be able to use it again.

But, I'm still going to have to store things in the oven for the next week.  We have an open house on Wednesday evening.  We won't be there, of course, but we've talked about going to the mall, buying supper in the food court and then sit and read our books for a couple of hours.  The house has never been so clean-on the surface.  But we both have worked our fannies off to get it that way.