A Cleaning Casualty

Hi All!

Swimming this morning was wonderful! The water was cool and the weather was warm (VERY warm!!!). I managed to do sixteen laps AND also walked to and from the pool! A good morning workout! Of course I was sweating buckets by the time I got home. A perfect excuse to spray myself while watering my flowers!

Cleaning has never been one of my favorite things in the world. It just seems like there is always something more important to be doing than cleaning. Now I have proof that cleaning is actually BAD!

You see - I cleaned our oven the other day.

This is the oven that came with our house and it has only been spot cleaned during the past eleven plus years. Both Hubby and I have agreed that this is all the thing needed. If something we baked leaked and dripped we cleaned it up. This wasn't the perfect solution since we had some "interesting" odors a time or two but, it worked for us.

Then I made a pizza which decided to spew all over the oven!

Looking at the mess, I decided that I might as well break down and actually clean the oven.

Now, our oven has the "auto clean" feature so I tried it out. I took the racks out and turned on the cleaning feature. Five and a half hours later it was done. About seven hours later I looked into the oven and was less than impressed with the cleaning job.

So . .. I got myself down and dirty and actually started cleaning the darn thing by hand. It came out really well. I am impressed (still!).

Then I tried to turn on the oven to bake some bread.

Nothing.

The oven had been "acting" up for the past couple of months so, initially, I thought this was just another part of the dramatics. I turned the oven off and tried again.

Nothing.

By now, Hubby decided to get into the action.

He turned the oven on.

Nothing.

He turned it off and tried again.

Nothing.

He got down and "jiggled" the heating element.

Nothing.

He dug out the manual and accused me of getting the heating element messed up while cleaning. He took the element to the local "appliance guru" and had it tested. It was fine.

Back home, Hubby put the heating element back in and tried again.

Nothing.

He decided to try the broiler (different element!).

Nothing.

The oven is officially dead.

I KNEW that cleaning wasn't good for things!

Trisha

Voice Update: Doing really well!