i've never done it. i'm a renter and i leave the place in the condition its been given to me. ive always recieved dirty ovens. maybe that makes me selfish and/or lazy, oh well. i'm not losing much sleep over it.

my mom does it like, once every 2-3 years i think

When I was a renter I cleaned the oven upon move-out. Now that I'm a home owner I ummmmm...well...hrrrrrmmm.

I have lived there a year and never cleaned it. BUT, on the plus side, it was a new oven when we moved in. Are there any non-toxic ways to really clean it?

never cleaned my oven. I own my parents old house and their old oven. In the 7 years I've owned it I've never cleaned it and I never remember my parents cleaning it either. Like you I just clean the outside and the occasional spill. I suppose I should really get in there and clean it but I've never noticed a degradation in my cooking nor has there ever been any other sign (smell, smoke, etc) that my oven needs to be cleaned.

I've lived in my apartment 3 1/2 years, I cleaned it once and that was only because something I was cooking pretty much exploded all over the interior, although I can't for the life of me remember now what that was. In the past the only part of the oven I've ever cleaned is the outside, the occasional inside spill, and very occasionally the interior part of the window so I can see what's going on inside without opening.

Before I read beyond the first paragraph, I was all prepared to feel totally inadequate about my oven cleanliness. Weeks at a time? Really? Are there really normal people in the world for whom weeks are a relevant scale for reflecting on how long between cleanings their ovens have gone?

Then I read on. Whew! Thanks for validating my oven's squalor.

Yeah, um... never. Well, I cleaned it when we bought the house, but since then, it's stayed squeaky clean, though we use it a lot.

Does the self-cleaning oven button count? Because if so, I clean my oven about once every two years.

Wow, the comments so far (and the post) make me feel better about myself. I was a little worried when I read "weeks" too. I'm a renter, and I've never cleaned my oven. I'll clean this one when I move out, because I like my property managers, but the last place I lived was a dump, and I didn't clean the over ever (everything else in the apartment was in better condition than when I moved in). They looked at it and said they were going to charge me for it, and I said go for it. They ended up charging me $12 for new drip pans, and that was it.

But yeah, as the not-owner of the oven, I've never really figured out why it needs to be clean on the inside.

i've cleaned an oven exactly twice. the first time, when i moved out of my last apartment (six years). the last time, after i'd lived in this apartment about six years.

not a month after i cleaned said current oven, my boyfriend roasted a chicken in a cast iron fry pan and throughly erased any evidence of cleanliness. now, i just ignore it. i can't handle the knowledge that it's one chicken away from being dirty again.

Seriously, WEEKS? I think of oven cleaning as an annual event, like spring cleaning. Like spring cleaning, I don't necessarily get around to it.

Never....
I have only one year with my brand new oven though.

I've lived in my duplex for 8 years now and I've semi-cleaned my oven exactly once, when I dropped a frozen pizza upside down in the oven, lol. I wiped up all the bits and pieces and had to take the bottom out to toss all the burnt up pizza topping crumbs, lol. I've cleaned an oven (a la that horrific foaming cleaner stuff) exactly once in my life and I'm almost 40 :)

I'm a renter, so I don't clean the oven except after a very occasional spill. If it doesn't smell and isn't smoking, I don't see the need to clean it since it's not mine. Of course, I'd like to think that I'd clean the oven annually if I were a homeowner, but who knows.

In my old house I cleaned it once with easy off (not easy at all) and never again...that stove got replaced a few years later. I cleaned the new one once (self clean), and it melted all my spice containers sitting on the top edge. Whoops.

I've been in the new house since july and haven't needed to clean the ovens yet. I'm pretty OCD about baking on cookie sheets if I think something might spill over. I've never had a spill big enough to cause a problem or make me think, "boy, I've got to clean the oven now"

I have never cleaned an oven, but I have always been a renter. Once my landlord took money out of my deposit for a "dirty oven" which I am still indignant about... what kind of renter cleans an oven! Really! At the most it maybe had some dried cheese stuck to the bottom and some crumbs. Good grief.

Are self-cleaning ovens rare? I run the self-cleaner on mine (there are two settings- I use the shorter one) about once a year. Usually before our big Christmas party so I don't smoke everyone out of the house, just in case it's funky in there.

I just cleaned the door for the first time in the 3yrs we've lived here and was shocked at how much better I could see what was inside...whoops!

This week I just cleaned my oven for the first time ever! I am so relieved to find other kindred spirits who are as enthusiastic about cleaning their ovens as I am (as in, NOT AT ALL). I used some Easy-Off fume-free stuff that actually worked pretty well. I have to do it again because the window still has a lot of grime on it.

Our new apartment has a new gas oven/range. So, before starting to use it I lined the bottom of the oven with heavy duty aluminum foil (cutting holes where there are openings). Makes it super easy to clean, just remove and replace a sheet that is dirty.
At my previous apartment it was a electric oven/range and wished I had thought of the foil idea. It got to be pretty dirty from dripping pies, making pizzas, cast iron pan steaks, & etc. and before we moved out I ran the 'self-cleaning' cycle a couple times then wiped out the interior, but it was still dirty. So we were charge a $35 oven cleaning fee.

We have a 3.5 yr old gas range and cleaned it about 3 times with the Self Clean feature.

Note: Never use the Self Clean mode for longer than 2hrs! Even if it defaults to 4-5hrs (like ours does) it will melt your thermostat after awhile (like ours did!) and then you'll be left high and dry without an oven (which was horrible!). It's a cheap fix, but the super high temp's for the Self Clean can also melt the wiring to your control panel, and that is a much more expensive fix.

Hmm, I guess you are not supposed to line the bottom of an oven with foil... oppps
You can place a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil on the oven rack beneath a pie or casserole, but it should be only a few inches larger the the baking pan to allow for proper heat circulation. Or, you can place pan on foil before placing in oven. Foil sheet should be large enough so that you can turn it up loosely around pan to catch spills. The foil will catch any food that may spill before it reaches the bottom of the oven.

The one time I remember my parents trying the self-cleaning feature on their oven, the smoke alarms went off... I've only scraped some fallen gunk (it was from a sweet potato, and was like, super caramelized burnt sugar, so light and fluffy burnt stuff!) out of my oven, but since it's a rental that already was on its last legs, I don't feel too bad not keeping it up. For heavens sake, the oven light is out, and the light that indicates if a burner is on doesn't work either. I'm not too concerned!

My oven regularly gets hot enough to turn any residual mess into ashes. (We make a lot of pizza.) So, cleaning is easy--I just vacuum it out every now and then!

I'm actually scared to use the cleaning button (my oven is a dacor (i didn't pick it) and I have 3x paid $135 for a new thermostat when my husband burned stuff on the broiler). What exactly happens in a self-cleaning cycle? It heats up really hot and burns everything to ashes, is that the idea?

Never again! My friends "spilled" something in my oven during party preparations. I didn't know the details but decided to clean the oven, since I'd lived there for a year and assumed it was the responsible thing to do. I hit the self clean button and walked away. I checked it periodically just to be sure everything was ok. After 90 minutes there were some small flames ups (crumbs of some sort, I assumed) so I stayed to wait for them to go out. Within minutes they turned into real flames and thick smoke started pouring out...I patiently waited believing it would put itself out. After almost 15 minutes, panic set in (perhaps due to inhaling the smoke) and I called the fire department. It was fear of burning down the whole condo building that motivated my call (my beautiful kitchen was apparently not my first thought!). By the time they arrived (5minutest maybe) the flames were out and I was not only embarrassed that I had called but began to cry as 3 fire trucks arrived and 13 firefighters traipsed through my condo to the now flameless oven (it was awesome). After a "talking to" by the chief about the power of "elbow grease" and relief that they didn't actually disconnect the gas line, they left. What my friends failed to mention was that the spillage also involved partial melting of a plastic storage container which they can't adequately cleaned up. I have barely recovered and I try not to blame the oven, but it seems unlikely that I will clean the oven any time soon.

NEVER. I wipe up spills when they happen. I will never clean an oven.

I'm scared to use the self-cleaning feature too, not sure what it does. I feel really Joan Craford-esque and anal, but I clean my oven weekly, it gets an interior and exterior wipe-down and is vacuumed of all crumbs.

Granted this is a new oven as of October and the first oven I have ever owned. When we were renters, we only cleaned it when it got so nasty that it would smoke with spilled items when turned on and by then it was a long Easy-Off cleaning that was a pain in the ass.

Clean...oven? It's been at least a year.

The self cleaning feature gets the oven up to crazy high degrees. It basically burns off the crud. Just make sure to remove the racks because it can destroy the finish on them.

My mother runs hers every few months. I've run it twice before in prior apts/houses. Definitely do not leave it unattended, but I've never had crazy amounts of smoke pouring out.

The only time i have ever cleaned my oven was when i moved into this apartment, which was 9 years ago. And i did a half-arsed job of it too. So ... 9 years and counting.

The oven and the fridge get done on the same day twice a year. Once I am doing one gross job, I might as well bust them both out. While the self cleaner is going I pull all the shelves out of the fridge and wipe everything with bleach. Then I tackle whatever the self cleaner didn't get in the oven.

I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to read all your responses. It's good to know I'm among good company!

Every 4 months. It's kind of a hassle because I have to take the racks and fan cover off (I have a convection oven) and those pieces would oxidize if I left them in.

@Trish 1980 -- I'm with you! I'm a hard-core renter and I believe that I have a higher obligation to care for the things that aren't mine. And I skeeve a dirty oven!

Re: the general question.
I clean my oven regularly, but I have a very easy way to do it.

I have a spray bottle filled with a liter of water and 3 Tablespoons of baking soda. When the oven gets a spill, after it has cooled off, I spray it with the water/baking soda solution. I repeat it a couple of times a day if the spill is really bad.

When the liquid has dried, all I have to do is wipe up the residue. This works great -- even for the oven racks. I've been doing this for the past couple of years, and my oven always looks brand new.

Simple and non-toxic.

I was always scared of the self-cleaning function...and then one day I tried it. Smoke everywhere, the house stunk for days. But my oven, well, that baby was clean. Now I do it regularly (we roast whole chickens, wings, thighs all the time and they spray grease everywhere...not to mention pizza night or a rib roast). The key is the first time you do it, be sure you close doors to as many other rooms as possible to keep them free of the smell, open windows/doors in the kitchen area, put the fan on the minute you push the button, burn some candles. Then do the self-clean on a regular basis (you can usually get by with a 2-hour clean then). The racks, however, are another story. I haven't found anything that works that well. By the way, I've been doing this for 7 years with my very basic 11-year-old GE electric oven. So far so good. If something melts or blows now, well, there's a new dual-fuel range in my future!

Our oven gets cleaned when my husband makes pizza and drips cheese all on the bottom. I never notice until the next time I use the oven and our super sensitive smoke detectors go off.

I am all about the clean oven button - the days of spraying on that nasty spray and scrubbing are long gone. I clean mine about every 2 months but that is more about me being clumsy and spilling stuff in the over all the time

I'm also a renter and I clean it once or twice a year, but if something spills, I clean it as soon as possible. Two good reasons to keep the oven clean: 1) fire prevention and 2) even and accurate baking temperatures (I learned this 2nd tip from Alton Brown).

Oh sigh... are there professional oven cleaners out there... I haven't done ours for years!!! We cook mostly on the counter top. But every wednesday I do a roast when my mother-in-law comes for dinner... and smoke clouds billow out whenever I turn it on!!! And I say to myself: I will clean this oven by next week... ahem... years have passed!!!

I'm a renter. I run the self-clean for ~2 hours once a year. That seems to be enough to incinerate whatever residual spillage there might be that didn't get wiped when it happened. When I moved in, my landlord -- who occupied the unit immediately prior to me -- had left me with a horribly dirty oven practically COVERED on the bottom with baked-on sesame seeds. I'm not sure he'd cleaned it once in the 12 years he'd lived there.

I wipe out my oven with a wet rag every couple weeks and scrape up spills as they happen. I've run the self-clean cycle only once, but my oven is generally pretty clean so I don't think I need to make that a regular thing. I think this oven is fairly new (I rent, so I'm not sure how new) and keeping it clean, as Trish1980 pointed out, is so much easier than doing a massive deep clean every couple years.

My parents own a few rental properties and I've always assumed they've had bad luck with thoughtless tenants who let things get nasty. Reading these comments, I see that many renters do this. That's surprising, and a little sad.

When I read this post I thought I certainly wouldn't be commenting and tell on myself. But wow, these comments make me feel better about my own uncleaned oven (never done it). I will clean big spills when they happen inside or out and clean the window if needed...that's as far as I've gone. I don't even know if my oven has a self-clean. Something to investigate.

Our stove is an ancient, tiny number that cleans up nicely on the outside, but I'd be afraid to touch the interior. My fiance lived here for 12 years and never baked a thing (aside from the Shake-n-Bake episode that singed his eyebrows- but I digress...) and I'm super careful. The temp is true, there's no bad smells, just a really black interior. If I wiped it with anything it would disentegrate. Fact.

I clean mine at least twice a year...usually in spring and summer when I can leave the windows open. I use the self-cleaner setting on my oven. Yes, it does get smoky, yes your fire alarm might go off due to the smoke, and you might get teary-eyed from the fumes but in the end, after you've cleaned out the leftover ash, you will have a beautiful (almost) brand new oven.

Here in Switzerland? Never. That's one of the many reasons I love my cleaning lady. She magically does it just as I am thinking I should see to it...

Our oven doesn't have a self-clean function, and is a horrible, glorified little easy-bake oven (for some inexplicable reason Swiss ovens are 5 cm smaller than the rest of Europe, so none of our baking trays fit, and there is no way to cook a turkey dinner in it...) and my refusal to clean it is my passive-aggressive way of showing my oven how much I dislike it...

I am a long time renter. I had a new stove upon moving into this apartment. I cleaned the oven once when I smelled burning smoke. I have a sheet underneath whenever I bake something.

i've cleaned my oven twice and each time it left disgusting fumes that took weeks to burn off. i don't think i did it right. i'm glad to read so many people don't clean their ovens; i feel now its okay to stop trying to clean my oven. yay!

When I move into a new place, I thoroughly clean out the oven before I use it. I'm a vegetarian, and the idea of animal grease on the oven walls and racks completely creeps me out. Leaving a glass dish with ammonia inside the oven overnight makes for an easy cleanup the next day.

Renter here - I scrub it out with baking soda paste once a year or so. Seems to be sufficient.

Renter here -- I usually do the oven self-clean once a year before Thanksgiving (and, of course, on move-out), and it always scares the crap out of me. Our new apartment seems to be built out of tissue paper and spit (but FABulous location) so I'd be afraid to use the self clean here, come Thanksgiving I'll give the baking powder a try.

when I move. Which lately has been fairly often. Makes me super cranky because I nearly always clean it twice in one week, at the old place and the new place. People, clean the oven when you leave!

That said I have no intention of moving soon and that chocolate cake batter might just burn off on it's own eventually...right?

Wow, for once in my life, I think I'm an over acheiver in cleaning.

I have a self-cleaner, and run it 2 or 3 times a year. But I do a lot of high temp stuff, pizzas and bread and so on, so I run the risk of smoking out the house if it isn't relatively clean. I also wipe down the exterior at least 2 or 3 times a week.

My mother, who could've given Marfa Stew-rat a run for her money, cleaned our old, NON-self cleaning ovens like 4 or 5 times a year, using that nasty spray on stuff. *shiver* Ahhhhhh, memories.....like helping her defrost the freezer. :-(

Oh, and when I do run the self-clean, I cheat, and throw the grid from my Weber kettle in there to clean along with the oven racks.

Whenever my apartment lease is up.

@Beth Haha that sounds like something I'd get myself into lol at least the flames went out!

I think I'm just going to try a baking soda paste - The self cleaning thing sounds a bit too scary

I'm really consoled to know that I am not alone here! The two occasions on which my oven really needed cleaning, I bought a new one! The self clean function scares me, but I'll have to bite the bullet soon as the oven is 2 years old and a new house is just out of the question right now!

This post is helping my self esteem.

We cleaned our oven after 2.5 years (the oven was new when we moved in) because we were hosting Thanksgiving. I think we'll wait until the next big event for the next cleaning.

I've lived in my current apartment a year and a half. I've cleaned my oven once in that time because it was getting smokey.

My mum cleans hers so often it literally looks brand new and unused, despite her having it over 10 years and using it daily.

I applaud her commitment to cleanliness and looking after her possessions, though I reckon its a bit over the top sometimes.

Whenever I open it & cringe, it's time to clean it. Huge fan of the self-cleaning feature!

Never. We don't have a self cleaning option, I'm not sure if self cleaning ovens are common in Australia- I've never noticed one.
I justify my non-oven cleaning ways by arguing the oven is hot enough to kill off any germs.

Well, I feel better...I am ashamed to say I've never cleaned this oven. We've lived here about 9 years <sheepish grin>

Twice a year. We have a self-cleaner that surprisingly doesn't smell much when it does the job, so it is not a horrible job (although I do prefer to do it when I can open windows, so this tends to be a April/October thing here in Wisconsin).

If I had to do it myself--hardly ever,

recently I removed the foil thing I put on the bottom to catch drips and saw that there was some old crud underneath, I guess from the last person who lived here.

It's my oven now so I decided to clean it up. Luckily, it just flaked off, and a good baking soda paste did the rest...

...but by the time I finished the door and the bottom I was like "screw the walls" and just left the rest. Oh well. Who really cares anyway? lol

Maybe once every year or two unless there is some huge spill.

As a landlord, I am apalled by these responses. Not having to clean the oven, simply because you're renting the place? C'mon already. Then some of you wonder why you can only find dumps to live in and you're indignant because you lost your security deposit? How very disgusting.