How to Clean Melted Plastic from Your Oven

We’ve all been there. The heavy, stifling, unnatural smell of burning plastic starts setting into your home and there’s only one place that’s coming from – your oven. There’s no way around it, you’ll have to clean the burnt plastic off your oven.

Yeah, it’s not an easy or pleasant task, so roll your sleeves and get ready to put some elbow grease. We’ve gathered the know-how of our professional cleaners to help you clean the melted plastic from your oven.

Preparation and safety measures

Be careful. Burns, breathing in burnt plastic fumes and other health hazards may occur to you while you’re trying to scrape the plastic from your oven.

Make sure to wear gloves and eye protection. Both are fairly inexpensive and can be found at your closest hardware store. And don’t substitute protection goggles with sunglasses or glasses. The glass that your eyewear is made from can shatter and cause much bigger problems to your eyesight, so spend the extra bucks.

Tools you’ll need to get burnt plastic off the oven

While most of the things that you’ll need to scrape off the burnt plastic off your oven racks and the bottom can be found in your kitchen, we strongly advise that you wear some protective gear.

Okay, so here’s what you’ll need to clean up that melted plastic mess you’ve got going on in your oven:

• A scraping tool – You’ll use it to scrape and pry off the melted plastic.
• Gloves – You’ll only need them if you aren’t sure whether the plastic has cooled off properly. In our experience, five to six hours is enough for the plastic to be completely cool and ready to be cleaned. If you find it warmer to the touch than the house temperature, then maybe it’s better to wait an hour or two.
• Protective eyewear – The simplest of protective eyewear that you can find in any local hardware store will do the job. Again, what won’t do the job are sunglasses and glasses. Because of the glass they use, if a piece of the plastic breaks and hits the glass it may shatter and cause even more damage.

How to remove melted plastic from the oven (Step-by-step)

Now that you are all set and ready to make your appliance shiny and clean again, it is time to get to work. Here is how to get rid of melted plastic on the inside of your oven once and for all!

Step 1: Wait for the plastic to cool down

The first step before you start cleaning anything from your oven is to let your oven cool down. This applies especially if you’re dealing with melted plastic. Leave the oven door open as well.

Make sure the room is properly ventilated as you don’t want to breathe in any burnt plastic fumes. Don’t spray any cleaning chemicals inside your oven. Turn it off and leave it. It’s likely that you just turned it off and started searching on how to clean it, so use the time to carefully go through the process below.

Step 2: Start scraping the plastic

Okay, before you start scraping just check if the plastic is cool. Five hours should be more than enough but better safe than sorry. Does it feel warmer than room temperature to the touch? Leave it for another hour. You can proceed only if it’s cool to the touch.

Remove everything from the oven, including the melted dish and racks. Throw the dish out and leave the racks in your sink. We’ll deal with them later.

Grab your scraper and start prying off the melted plastic from the bottom of your oven. Make sure to remove everything. You don’t want to start cooking tomorrow only to have a dish poisoned by plastic fumes.

Now it’s time to remove the plastic from the racks. With the help of your trusty scraper scrape all of the leftover plastic chunks. Be thorough.

Step 3: Clean your oven with an oven cleaner

You’ll notice there will be some type of leftover residue after you remove the plastic. Don’t worry, that’s fairly easy to remove with the proper oven-cleaning detergent and tools.

We suggest that you use a store-bought solution as it will be much stronger than the homemade one you can make. Spray the whole interior of the oven and let it sit for five minutes. Agitate it with a sponge and wipe it with a clean rug.

Spray your oven racks as well. Grab tinfoil, crumble it and scrub it. If you want to make your oven racks shiny again – we’ve covered how in this article.

How to clean melted plastic off a stove top

Sometimes accidents happen on the stovetop. You turn it on and you just forget that you’ve left a plastic bowl of cereal there from this morning. Well, we’ve got you covered on this one as well.

What you’ll need

• Scraper
• Water
• Olive oil
• Soft cloth
• Baking soda

If you’re lucky you won’t have to go to the store for a WD-40.

How to remove the melted plastic from the stovetop

The process is pretty similar to the one mentioned before. However, you will have to be a bit gentler with the stovetop as to not damage it during the cleaning.

1. Let it cool off for one or two hours. Make sure the windows are open and there’s an abundance of fresh air coming inside the room. Plastic fumes can be dangerous.
2. Scrape off the melted plastic off the stovetop. Try to remove as much as you can. Once you clean the bigger part of the stovetop, comes the time to deal with the leftover residue.
3. Make a paste by mixing water and baking soda. It will create a mildly abrasive paste that will help in scrubbing off the residue that you couldn’t remove with the scraper.
4. Once you’re happy with the result, wipe off everything with a clean soft cloth. You can clean the surface with a glass cleaner to give it that shiny, spotless look and you’re good to go!

You’ve been in this situation before? We’d love it if you share your tips with our readers in the comments below!