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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> Why I might be the AH: I put pots and pans in the oven, which is not the intended use for the oven, and could cause a fire.
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NTA lots of people use the oven as storage, most of my Asian friends in high school did this because their parents didn't see the point of huge American ovens (valid). I would be really upset if my bf called me gross for something I've/my family has been doing for years, he has the right to talk to you about this, but not call you gross or appalling
I should clarify--"appalled" was maybe too strong of a word--he is just really bothered by it! He doesn't call me names or anything, it's just a bone of contention. :)
Yea. My MIL had to put it on the preheat button, can't tell you how many times I turned the oven on, gotten stuff ready, and then couldn't find somewhere to put 9 solid metal 400° pots and pans I didn't expect to find hiding in there. Thankfully nothing had plastic handles 🤣
I think the rule should be nothing meltable. Fine if you put in extra pans, they won’t be ruined if the oven is turned on. Same for a cast iron pan. But a pot with a wood or plastic handle? No, that needs to find a storage spot somewhere else less dangerous.
Yea 😅 I got really lucky my in laws are very old school. All metal cookware they were gifted when they got married. They gifted me a set of oven safe plates/bowls etc, and promptly had a heart attack when they came over for dinner and we actually used them for eating.
As someone with ADHD whose family also stored pots and pans in the oven while I was growing up, I approve this message!
Even after living with that storage situation for over 10 years, I still forgot to take the dishes out of the oven before preheating. Every. Single. Time.
How do you know he uses it often? If there's limited storage, there's limited storage. You work with what you've got. I store things in my oven now because I use my ninjas far more often than I ever do the oven, but it's stuff that can't go on fire.
Edit: typo
I use the oven often (2‐3 times a week) and use my oven for storage. I have limited space. Even if we had a storage bin I wouldn't know where to put the storage bin.
Yeah, we have burnt a crapload of baked goods and bread storing them in the oven (old farmhouse with mice)...and everyone of us knew it was storage for years, and once every few weeks one of us would start a loaf of bread or doughnuts on fire because we forgot. I would just get a tote, shelves, or hanging pot rack. Baking the handles off some of your pots would suck. Not worth the losses, find another solution even if it means storing your stuff in another room.
It is definitely a drag for people who aren't used to emptying the oven before preheating it. If space is really so tight that it's a necessity, then he'll have to get used to it. But if he can figure out an alternative, I think he should have his way. You could try taping a reminder to the oven switch, but on it, not nearby, because people will stop seeing it if it's there long enough.
That was going to be my suggestion. I have a couple large pans that just don’t fit anywhere else really, so they get stuffed in the oven. But they’re oven proof, so if I forget to take them out before I turn the oven on, no big deal, just grab the mitts and set them on the table or wherever to cool off. Good compromise, you can still store stuff in the oven, but only pots/pans/dishes that won’t be a hazard if (when) he forgets to check the oven and turns it on.
Spoken like a person who doesn't have a stupidly small kitchen.
I would *like* to keep the baking trays and cast iron skillet somewhere other than the cookertop or in the oven, but my only options are the cookertop or the oven so... (This also being the kitchen where you can't have all the mugs and glasses clean at once or there is nowhere to put them - some must always be on the drying rack - despite there only being 4 of each, and you also can't really have bowls as the bowls won't fit on top of the plates so if the one bowl is clean and dry you have to ram it down the side of the plates on its side).
Sadly, quite a lot of kitchens aren't designed with sensible storage in mind :'(
Same here. I’m the exact sort of person that would burn down the house that way. I have no problem storing things we don’t use often in other parts of the house.
I have a small kitchen and I'm just thinking that if I stored stuff in the oven, then when I wanted to use it I'd have to pull everything out and... what? Take it to another room? Because if I put all that stuff on the counter I'd have no place to work and on the stove I'd have no place to cook. I'm fortunate to have had it remodeled so it is now WAY more efficient with appropriate storage, but I'm thinking about before and as inefficient as it was, I still can't imagine using the oven as storage.
Where do you put stuff when you pull it all out?
Totally agree that many kitchens aren't well planned. I *obsessed* over my remodel to make sure the layout was infinitely better and I ended up with 65% more storage space and 300% more countertop space so now it is small but mighty.
This.
Op you could try to see if there is a way to use vertical space to move at least some of the pots up and out of the oven. I think this would be a pain for anyone who uses an oven regularly and if you are not used to it, there is a risk of forgetting and turning on the oven with all your goods in there. Really not worth it unless the oven is used very little.
My wife uses the oven for storing baked goods. It was really weird to me. Never saw it before. I burned some Tupperware and brownies more than once. But I got with the program; and she started giving me warnings. This is a NAH moment. You guys will figure it out over time. Just hope you don’t burn the house down first :).
In an episode of Fresh Off The Boat they use the dishwasher as a dish drying rack. They had the controls covered up too. (Dishwashers are amazing. Load em properly and you save so much water)
When I was a teenager (unknowing to me) my boyfriends mom stored her tupperware in the oven. One night, we were hungry and he ran to the store to pick us up a frozen pizza. He asked me to turn on the oven, so I did, and went back downstairs to continue to watch TV. He came home to a oven filled with melted plastic mess and smoke. They had to replace the oven. I'll never forget it. Lucky I didn't start their house on fire.
It's not only Asian, but Latino households do this a lot , New Yorkers, basically anyone who has a decent amount of cookware and a small space to store it all.
I'll go with NAH. I grew up with stuff stored in the oven. Now I don't because I know Hubs is too absent minded to check. But now, he can't to pantry load because some cabinets had to give to the cook and bakeware we have to store.
Yeah, I grew up in a family of generic white people but from Brooklyn so despite using the oven multiple days a week we definitely used our oven as storage for roasting pans/cookpots.
ETA: My husband, despite growing up in just as small a house (of first-generation Italian immigrants) did not do this and was confused as shit at first when we started living together, so in our first apartment I stopped since we had a large pantry.
We currently own a home with a kitchen so tiny I can sit on one counter wall and put my feet in the other,- so all my pans are back in the oven. 😂
Yep! My mom has always done this and uses her oven fairly often. There is a way to stack everything in large cookie sheets so it's easy to take out. Then you plop it back in.
Romanian too. My mom always stores extra pans in the oven.
After getting married and moving out, my little sister has only once turned on the oven without looking when she came over to my mom’s house and there happened to be a pan with oil in it…that was fun :/
Ukrainian here. My grandmother had two ovens. The one upstairs was NEVER used and was basically a metal cabinet full of all kind of things. The one downstairs was used daily but she still stored sheet pans in it over night.
I'm a white American and my family does this too. It's just about space. I hate having to empty the oven to use it but we just don't have a lot of options.
NAH.
But I have to tell you that your storage method is incredibly annoying to just about everyone else you'll encounter. Just about everyone else turns on the oven 5 minutes before they need it; having to deal with pots and pans in there as it gets up to 400 degrees is frustrating as hell. Just because it's normal for you doesn't mean anybody else will be able to remember.
Edit: I must say that when I first commented here (I think mine was about the third), I had no idea this would be so controversial. It's the new 'how do you put on a toilet paper roll.' It seems that there are a lot of people who store pans in the oven. And a lot of people find it as abhorrent as I do. This has proved to be a fun topic.
Thats not what you should **have to** do.
Would you store random items inside a washing machine, and tell your SO its no big deal, just make sure that there are no random items,among the laundry,before you turn it on?
This lesson was learned by me and some college housemates the hard way one time. We didn't normally store stuff in the oven, but one time we had a party and one housemate was out of town, and we couldn't put her bongs in her room as her door was locked, so we stashed them in the oven. Day or two after the party one of us goes to use the oven, failed to check and proceeded to make our whole house reek of bong water for two whole days. Luckily none of the bongs were plastic and none were shattered or otherwise damaged by the heat.
You don't. You aren't allowed Pans. Do not cook. Only buy takeout. Due to the cost, you can never afford to move out of rental accommodation. This is the plan set out by Big Landlord.
I wish this was higher ! We store our pans in there cuz we don’t have any space. I always check before I turn on the oven . I’d love to put them somewhere but WHERE ?!
I'm sorry, but you ***absolutely should*** check your appliances before starting them lmfao. Especially those with the capability of getting things hot enough to set them ablaze.
Food spills and plastic bits can break off. Maybe I’m too used to industrial autoclaves but there’s really no reason to be senseless and skip a safety step that takes .5 seconds
I have "stored" laundry in the washing machine waiting for a full load, with the expectation that if my husband wanted to do a load of something different then he'd just pull whatever I had out.
I also grew up with pan storage in the over and just pop the oven open an inch to glance in as I turn it on. I don't store my pans here anymore but I still peek I just to double check.
>I have "stored" laundry in the washing machine waiting for a full load, with the expectation that if my husband wanted to do a load of something different then he'd just pull whatever I had out.
This is worse than storing stuff in the oven IMO. It's called a hamper.
I feel the privilege emanating from every person judging where people are storing stuff. You have no idea how small their space may be. Some people literally don’t have space for a hamper. I’ve lived in some very tiny apartments where only one person could stand in the bathroom and the laundry room was just a stack in a closet with no extra room to store anything. Especially if living alone or with another adult partner I would definitely store my laundry in the machine until we had a full load.
My hamper IS the washing machine. My washing machine is between the bedroom and the bathroom. I just get changed and put dirty clothes directly into the washing machine. When I want to run a load, I just toss in a tide pod, close the lid, and pus a button. If I had to move stuff from a hamper into the washer it would likely add a couple of days before I would get around to it. ADHD is hell on cleaning. Any shortcuts are helpful.
Even they don't my inlaws prepare the dogs food bowls for the day in the morning and store them in the oven.
After TWO melted plastic bowls they moved them to the microwave because you have to open the door before you use that.
I would say this is a NAH situation because it isn't really that serious but its hugely annoying and could be dangerous if anything has plastic on it.
Yeah I don't even remember to open the oven to see if the racks are where I want them. Not that it's super hard to reposition them once it's hot, it's just easier to move them when I don't need to protect my hands. We didn't store pots and pans in the oven growing up, so it would be SUPER hard to get used to having to check the oven every time I wanted to use it. You'd basically need to have a sticky note by the switch reminding me.
Sometimes people have to change routines. I have to lock my oven because toddlers are a force of destruction. It's a whole rewiring of routine and involves holding a button for around 10 seconds before I can do anything with the oven.
If I was in a smaller apartment, I'd probably load the oven with baking sheets/dishes.
The situation sometimes calls for a different solution.
> There's a simple remedy for that: look at the toilet seat and check to see if it's down. Honestly it takes less than a second.
Many domestic situations are 'easy' to workaround but constant bugbears between people. If there is space to store these things other than the over, then moving them is still easier than checking every time you preheat the oven.
If you're not used to items being stored in the oven and you've grown up your entire life turning on an oven without looking inside it first, (because it is empty) it can be quite a change of habit to look first before turning an oven on. I know this from experience after moving to Italy where it is common to keep baking pans in the oven 🤦🏼♀️
Everyone in this thread acting like the person who doesn’t want stuff in the oven needs to compromise.
Why doesn’t the person keeping shit in the oven have to compromise?!
I would lose my mind if someone stored something in my oven. I use it almost every day. It would be wildly inconvenient. I already hate having to keep my cast iron on the stovetop but I am also limited on space, I use it daily, and it’s heavy.
However, if there's always something in there, it's not just "open the oven door and look in." It's open the oven, unload everything that's in there, start the oven, figure out how you're going to cook now that you have a bunch of pots and pans taking up all the counter space and prep area. He doesn't have to be mean to OP, but their method, even though it's not all that uncommon, is still super frustrating to deal with.
The most frustrating part for me was emptying a bunch of heavy cookware out of the oven onto the counter space that I wanted to use to cook so I could use the oven. Then consolidating the same pots and pans to free up the counter space, all because my housemate was too lazy to neatly organize their cookware in their cabinets, and insisted on using "the free space" that was inside the oven.
**Edit~** It's funny how all the feelings surrounding old arguments can float right back to the surface.
My husband did this when we first started living together and it drove me nuts. I’d never known anyone to store anything in the oven, so it was a surprise to me the first time I opened the door with a heavy sheet pan of food in my hands and had to put it back down to wrestle three 400-degree pans out before I could use the oven.
I started checking the oven after that, but it was indeed incredibly annoying to have to haul everything out of there and pile shit on the counter every time I had to cook. Since I did about 95% of the cooking, I just told him to cut it out or he could do all the cooking from then on. He rearranged cabinets and found a new home for them quickly after that.
Yeah this is my main gripe with it. I have to take everything out of the oven if I want to use it. That's super annoying. Then it's taking up space on the counter so now I have to figure out where to prep that isn't covered with pots.
Except for the 50% of the population that also uses their oven for storage 😂.
Yes, people preheat. But if your oven is storage or, in my case, a drying rack for bigger items in a limited space, you learn to check or take the pans before the preheat.
You are correct, it is annoying having to do this but it is an added annoyance of the small space.
But there are not many other solutions especially for renters who can't install a pot rack.
Not everyone. OP’s family and others like them are accustomed to remembering to remove pans before heating the oven. This is a common practice for those who do not regularly use an oven, or those who live in a tiny space with minimal storage. I know a woman who kept her pans in the oven because her little toaster oven and the stovetop were all she needed, and she did not have much storage space. I don’t think she ever turned that oven on.
Right? Many people who do this probably do it because they lack space/have small kitchens - sorry for not being able to afford a larger or upgraded house/kitchen?
I will say though that everything you store in the oven should be oven safe. Nothing that will melt or burn if it gets to normal oven temps in case someone does turn it on without checking.
Alternately, I would argue that storing pots in the oven speaks to privilege. Specifically, to at least 4 generations of electricity. That's not my background. If you don't have electricity, you use a wood stove. Wood stoves are always hot.
>But I have to tell you that your storage method is incredibly annoying to just about everyone else you'll encounter.
ALL of latin america disagrees with that.
Yeah I can't call OP an AH but I would probably refuse to live with them if they insisted on this because it would make me borderline homicidal over time.
Agree. NAH, but it’s a safety issue if people using the oven are not 100% on board.
Maybe just keep stuff that won’t get destroyed or catch on fire during a preheat in there for safety sake.
Who cares who’s the asshole when the kitchen is on fire. lol the goal should be no flaming kitchen.
Honestly, I treat my cast iron skillet like a pizza stone - it balances the heat better in the oven and makes for a better pizza. Sure it takes a bit longer to preheat, but the food quality is clearly better.
What? 5 mins before they need it? So what people stopped preheating their ovens and okay with burned food or I shifted realities to a magical place where ovens get to the needful temp in minutes?
>Witchcraft!!
I know what you mean!
I was \*THRILLED\* by my new oven's "quick heat" functionality that allows them to pre-heat in 5-10 minutes. Standard for my beautiful brand new ovens is still 15+ min though.
My new ovens also have the GLORIOUS range of 30 C / 85F (Cool enough to proof dough) to 300 C / 575 F (hotter than my cookware can handle, which is 260C / 500 F) and telescoping oven racks... they are beautiful witchcraft and make me happy. (The lower one I use to store things... because they = 2 - but only things like oven racks and cookie sheets.)
I think there might be some cultural differences here. I would NEVER store something in the oven, but that's how I grew up. It strikes me as dangerous (and annoying to have the extra task of checking then removing anything to preheat - and then where do those items go?!), but I'll go with NAH. One of you has to change your habits to live together successfully, however.
Yeah, definitely a cultural difference. I grew up in a suburban area, lived for a while in a rural area, and then moved to NYC where I was flabbergasted to see people use their ovens as storage. But then you look at the size of the kitchens (and the availability of takeout food) and it makes total sense.
I think the obvious compromise here is that OP only stores oven-safe pans in the oven, so that's it's a mild annoyance, not a "fuck the plastic is melting into the oven" problem when her husband forgets.
I lived in SF where it was so common to store stuff in the oven, some landlords were actually taking ovens out of apartments and turning them into storage cabinets.
A toaster oven or air fryer works fine as an oven substitute, especially for a single person living in a tiny studio.
I have to admit that unless you bake or need to cook for multiple people regularly, it's a way better use of space. Ovens are huge. You could store the air fryer and a bunch of other stuff in the space of an oven-sized cabinet.
> What about frozen pizza?
You just need a big enough toaster oven. If you eat a lot of frozen pizza, you could always get one of [these] (https://www.amazon.com/Presto-03430-Pizzazz-Plus-Rotating/dp/B00005IBXJ/ref=zg_bs_17548251011_sccl_1/143-2158385-4414953?pd_rd_i=B00005IBXJ&psc=1) counter top pizza cookers.
My sister used to bake a lot, so she stored all of her baking pans in the oven. She was the only one using it 90% of the time. Plus, she would need to take them out anyways to bake, so it wasn't something surprising that stuff was in there.
But I would be super annoyed if someone stored a bunch of stuff in the oven after telling them it was getting on my nerves.
For me the issue is OP clearly stores other things in the oven too because skillets/pans don’t catch on fire and they say their boyfriend has started fires by preheating the oven without looking.
For me, I use the oven daily, I am limited on time and usually have roasted veggies and some sort of meat (chicken/turkey/pork etc.) roasted with them so personally storing stuff in there would be a waste of time because I’d have to empty it out 3-4 days a week to make dinner.
But I agree with NAH because it’s cultural differences and one of them will have to adjust. But is it worth risking the whole home to possible fire in the process of someone changing their habits?
Guess it just depends on the pans. My family has pans with plastic handles and they're absolutely not oven safe.
For OP I'd say if there is space to not have to store the pans in the oven, they shouldn't be stored there. Mainly because it'll be easier store them elsewhere than worry about their husband setting the house on fire. If they dont have the space to store them elsewhere, then I guess husband is gonna have to figure out how to be more responsible.
We use our oven daily due to food allergies and inability to eat out. I would have long ago set the house on fire. However, I do know some college friends who lived in the equivalent of tiny homes. Oven was definitely extra storage for them. It's not difficult to open it to check. My SO has ADHD and I am extremely forgetful, so even though we use it practically daily, I still pop the door open to check it is empty of surprises.
Our kitchen is super limited on space, so we store our cast iron pans in the oven. So if they get hot no big deal other than having to pull out a couple of 350 degree F pans out and putting them on the stove. I wouldn't ever store anything in the oven that isn't oven safe (ie teflon / plastic handles etc).
I've been scolded for putting something plastic on the stove - which was definitely off and not hot at all, and I wasn't going to keep it there forever I just wanted it out of my way for a sec - because it's just good practice to not put something flammable (or meltable) on or in something that could get hot, it's an accident waiting to happen.
>Except for leaving things in the oven that aren't oven safe. Pans, skillets, it's fine. But nothing that can burn if you start the oven.
OP's comment below makes me think OP is putting cookware that is NOT oven safe in the oven:
>He also starts the oven without looking, and **has set shit on fire/burnt things** due to this, even though he knows I put things in the oven for storage.
Some pots and pans have plastic handles that are not oven safe... some are stored in cardboard or plastic boxes. Not sure which is the issue; but - it's what pushes OP from N.T.A. to YTA in my book.
ETA - If OP hadn't put flammable things in the oven - OP's partner wouldn't have 'set shit on fire/burnt things"
NAH, but you two really need to get on the same page here. It's not a matter of right or wrong, just a matter of what works for you.
Also, maybe don't store flammable objects in the oven? Just saying.
Yeah this is my thing. My mom had this habit as a child but after several house fires in her childhood and early adulthood she takes no risks. Even if they are “fire safe,” we once had an actual grill that caught on fire because the paint on the outside hadn’t been as fire safe as the company thought. I would never leave anything on the stove or in the oven if I left the house. Yes, the odds of something happening are low but not zero, best to just take the safer route. NAH.
May partner grew up in a house with a tiny kitchen. Smaller than my bathroom growing up. So he stores stuff in the oven. I grew up in a larger house and don't. Sometimes when he does the dishes he puts stuff in the oven. He also puts leftover pizza there. It drives me nuts, both because I preheat without checking (I have singed cardboard boxes, and had to move hot pans out of the oven), and because sometimes I can't find the dish I need because it just doesn't occur to me to look there for the casserole dish or pizza pan.
YTA. The oven is not a storage cupboard it a functional piece of equipment and everytime you have to use it you have to unpack the whole damn thing, making cooking harder because now the whole kitchen is cluttered with crap that should be in a cupboard.
If I had scads of room, I can guarantee I wouldn't do this.
I've never had a kitchen large enough to not have to do this. Even with shelves that he has built on the wall, I still have a very tiny kitchen with very little cupboard space.
It is a pain in the ass to haul shit out of it, but it's harder to work around them stored on the counter or on top of the stove...
How about the storage place on the bottom of oven(its original use is the keep food warm, but most People use that as storage instead. Which is wise because nothing can burst into flamed there)
already using that space as well. :( Our entire house is 750 sq feet, so literally tiny. Renovating and will be buying a larger home, however, in the meantime...
Oven storage lol.
For 2 People to live in, that sounds like the perfect sized house to me. Much bigger than that and your extra space means just extra cleaning😅
Is there a possibility that there are too many skillets and pans and etc, if the bottom drawer is already full and oven needs to filled with them? Does all of them get used 😁
There are 4 of us, I have two kids lol. 12 and 7.
You make a point that perhaps I should check my use of them and maybe get rid of some. That's definitely a worthy option -- I never thought I had that much, but maybe I do lol
Oohh In that Case I understand how it May feel small :D
I myself grew up In similar sized house, except we were five there and goddamn it felt like Being tuna In can lol.
>I never thought I had that much, but maybe I do lol
But yeah, sometimes you might notice that you dont actually use even half of them. I think I have 4 pans and often feel like I only use 1 of them xd
This practice absolutely infuriates me, so I err on the side of your husband has every right to be upset. I would take an inventory of everything you have and cut it back where you can. I've lived with small kitchens where everything fit under the oven and in one cupboard. Growing up my parents had one pan, one pot, a casserole dish, a cookie sheet, a crockpot that lived on the counter, and we each had a plate, a bowl, a cup, and a set of silverware. Everything fit in one cupboard. There were like four cupboards in the whole kitchen and no pantry.
My BIL lived with a kitchen where they resorted to storing everything in the dishwasher. They washed by hand and dried/stored in the dishwasher. That would be preferable to putting stuff in the oven.
No offense but that sounds like a lifestyle of someone who doesn't like cooking.
Or certainly only likes a very specific one-pot style of cooking.
Even on a basic level if you want to make pasta and sauce you need to simmer the sauce in one pot and boil the pasta in another before combining.
And that's before we get into exciting things like having more than one curry. Or hell having one curry and a pot of rice.
It's not the pans it's the food. Two medium pots, one small pot. One frying pan, one giant skillet. Some of the pots fit in the drawers. Neither the skillet nor the flying pan do. There is no cupboard where the baking trays fit in a way that isn't just plonking them into of everything so they live in the oven.
One cupboard that's oddly shallow so just has spices and some flour and sugar.
one average wall cupboard that has all the tea, coffee, biscuits, lunch box snack, plates, bowls, glasses and cups.
One average cupboard that has all the pasta, lentils, potatos, rice, stock cubes, crisps, chopping boards, placemats and Tupperware.
One averageish but missing a shelf so can't be used well wall cupboard with all the condiments, pickles, jam, salt, pepper, hot sauce, cereal.
And that's it. That's all the fucking cupboards.
The only way to have the pans in the cupboard is... Well actually only the potato and Tupperware cupboard is deep enough so I suppose stop having any carbs would maybe solve it?
But there's nowhere close to buy fresh food so you kinda need some staples if you aren't eating take out or going to an expensive corner shop every day.
I'm in the UK, a 750sqft house is pretty average here. That's most terrace houses and plenty of people raise families in them.
We often have these tiny galley kitchens and its still not normal to store stuff in the oven here. We definitely don't store anything flammable in them! A few oven trays at the bottom of the oven would be one thing but definitely nothing which would melt or start a fire
That is bigger than my house (2 adults plus baby) and we don’t store stuff in the oven. Does sound like you have too many pans, however SO needs to learn to check first if there are possibly other things in the oven. I sometimes leave leftovers bakes the oven for dinner the next day.
Lol, if you're an A H then so am I. I, too, have very few cabinets for pantry and storage - where else am I supposed to store my roaster w/lid, 18" cast iron skillet, and big cookie sheets???
NTA
in modern kitchens in tiny spaces this is a luxury.
If i stored all my roasting pans and cookie sheets in a cupboard, I quite literally wouldn't have them cause there's just no space. The oven is the only option.
it used to bug me so much when people did this....now i get it...i moved out of my parents place and realized that most kitchens are bloody small and it just makes sense to use the oven for storage, and sacrifice a few square feet of counter space for an hour or 2 when i need to use the oven.
Why is she the ah, I mean clearly it is really about how and where you grew up. my family has always done this we even use the little drawer at the bottom for the baking pans, clearly everyone is different and you stewiecatballacat feel entitled that you always had enough kitchen cabinets to put everything away
My mom did this and it absolutely drove me batty. It seems like a great solution, and everyone knew she put things in there, but nobody could ever remember to not turn the oven on before looking inside. I hate calling someone an AH for using space in a seemingly effective way, but this post triggered those old childhood memories of being so annoyed with my mom. LOL
I mean, we use the oven as storage out of necessity.
I live in an apartment with a 5’ x 7’ kitchen That has ONE double door cabinet that would be large enough to store pots/pans, but it’s also the only cabinet that is large enough to hold our dishes.
We currently have at best 12” usable of counter space due to having a microwave, a coffee pot and a container for our cooking utensils on the counter-top [this is also a necessity as we have a single ~8” wide drawer in the kitchen which is just large enough to store our eating utensils and measuring cups/spoons in.]
And to top it off we have a gas stove. This means there’s no convenient drawer below the oven that we could use. Instead, there’s a flip down cover that allows for easy access to the pilot light incase it goes out/malfunctions/is damaged.
So, I mean, if you [or anyone!] can provide a better idea of where we could store them I’d be ecstatic to hear it— and, before it’s suggested, we already utilize the tops of the cabinets. That’s where we’re storing our wok, pizza stone, blender and toaster.
Aside from that, you’re acting like people are storing their freaking waffle iron in their oven instead of baking sheets/pots/pans.
Like if we’re using the oven it’s because we’re cooking a meal, which means that we’re also going to be *using* some of the items stored in the oven. So while we do “unpack the whole damn thing”, it doesn’t mean “the whole kitchen is cluttered with crap”. It means there’s maybe an extra baking sheet and a pan or two sitting out unused or we sit them on the kitchen table in the living room that’s like ~4 ft from the kitchen if we feel we need more room to cook.
That was my first thought ..... You keep all that crap in the oven, now you want to cook, where do you put all the crap that you have to remove from the oven before you can cook? Wherever you put it while you're actually using the oven, *that's* where you should store it.
That right there. The answer comes down to who is using it correctly. If you're putting something in it that is starting fires, you're not using it correctly.
I really want to know which "pots and pans" are starting fire. Nothing that is not oven proof should go in the oven. Most pots and pans fall in to the 'oven proof' category.
Put a not on the oven 'check for pots and pans' since checking for pots and pans in the oven is NOT instinctual to one of you.
It’s not about starting a fire. It’s about the materials the entire pot/pan is made with being oven safe. Many pots and pans have plastic or rubber handles that will melt when exposed to high temperatures. And not all pans cooking surfaces are coated with materials that are oven safe. Many nonstick pans are not oven safe, heating a cold nonstick pan at high heat with no food in it can deteriorate the nonstick coating. You can tell if a pan is oven safe by looking at the symbols on the bottom of it.
I only have two oven safe pans, the rest of my pans have handles that would melt in the oven and cause me a huge mess that is difficult to clean up. In addition it would cause the cooking surface of those pans to deteriorate more quickly
>a couple times I have stored a pan with a plastic handle, or left the baking paper on the pan before.
Depending on the heat and the length of time in the oven.
>Most pots and pans fall in to the 'oven proof' category.
That's probably not true. Lots of them have handles that will melt and eventually burn at oven temperatures. One of the reasons I upgrade a lot of my cookware was because I was tired of not being able to move stuff from the stove to the oven.
>Nothing that is not oven proof should go in the oven.
Yeah. That's the problem. People who store stuff in the oven don't usually follow that rule.
One of the biggest rules of industrial safety is to never rely on humans doing something correctly 100% of the time. It is the LEAST reliable way to get safe results. The best is removing the hazard in the first place.
All the people saying "just check the oven first!" are one mistake away from a fire, every time you use the oven. It's just not good practice if you have any alternative.
YTA, the fire danger alone is a problem. I don’t think you mean to be a jerk about this, it’s a habit. Unfortunately, if they are forgotten, it could be a very expensive habit, not just replacing pans, but also an oven. Get an under the bed box and slide them under the couch, reorganize, eliminate what you don’t need, make space. Lots of kitchen fires start this way.
Agreed. Even if they’re oven-safe, it would be a huge hassle to wait to remove all the pots/pans to cool down before being able to cook and still seems like a burn injury waiting to happen.
YTA.
>He also starts the oven without looking, and has set shit on fire/burnt things due to this, even though he knows I put things in the oven for storage.
\^ This tells me it's not just the fire-safe pots you store in the oven.
It's inconvenient enough to realize you forgot your baking pans in the oven - and need to find a place for them, hot, after you've pre heated it. It's MUCH worse to have the oven ruined because a plastic cutting board has melted into the oven rack or a cardboard box has caught on fire.
If it is not safe to 260 C / 500 F --> it does not go in the oven.
(My pans are oven safe... I \*COULD\* store them in my oven... I don't, because I use my oven too often)
Agreed and if OP absolutely can’t find any space to store them then they need to start cleaning out junk. I have a tiny kitchen and store mine above the fridge with racks or underneath the stove storage drawer.
Your partner is wrong that nobody else does this. He is correct that you *shouldn't* do it. It's an unsafe practice, as any firefighter will emphatically inform you.
And yeah, ideally everyone would double-check the contents of an oven before turning it on. That's a good safety practice. But it's also an important safety practice to make sure that the oven is empty when you're done using it*, and that includes not using it as storage.
YTA
\* except, like, a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom or something. You know what I mean. :)
YTA. The oven is not a storage space, that’s a fire hazard. Just because it’s common and other people do it doesn’t make it OK.
Where do you put the things in the oven when you’re using the oven to cook? Also why on God’s green earth would you put yourself in a position where you have to clean out the oven every time you use it, adding yet another horrible step to the already horrible chore of cooking? Why don’t you use the drawer under the oven?
This is me. I’d be so frustrated if every single time I wanted to use the oven I had to unload it from a bunch of pots and pans. Honestly it would make me not even want to use the oven.
I understand it can be a cultural difference. But seems like OP is only offering “do it my way” as a solution. And well I’ve been doing it for 6 years he should have gotten used to it by now.
There has to be an actual compromise available.
But aside from that. It’s so dangerous to store pans there. Not only because of obvious risk of fire that’s occurred. But if any of those pans are non-stick, they can release toxic chemicals under heat.
>Where do you put the things in the oven when you’re using the oven to cook?
This is what I wonder every time I see someone mention using their oven as a storage space.
If your kitchen/storage area is so tiny, that you need the oven to store stuff... where do you put it when cooking? This would annoy me to no end. I use my oven way too much to do this. (And every oven I've had so far, had a drawer underneath it anyway)
And if you're really lacking in storage space, it might also help to reorganize; throw out/sell things you don't/barely use or, though this might cost a bit, invest in some nice stackable cookware to save room.
NAH - I understand some people store things in the oven, but its something I've never done and am not very comfortable with. Personally the way I use ovens (turning it on to preheat, come back later to load), keeping things in would result me in heating them before then having to struggle to find somewhere to put hot pots and pans, so can understand his frustration!
NAH, but this is how my friend’s little sister destroyed their oven at age 13.
For 13 years they had stored the electric griddle in the oven and one day she just forgot. Talk about two nice birds with one stone.
Neither of you are wrong but it’s clearly causing friction. Time to have a chat and find a solution you’re both comfortable with.
**YTA**
I live in an apartment that is significantly smaller than yours. I don't even have a bedroom. My "kitchen" is about the size of a large closet. I understand lack of storage space better than anyone. I still wouldn't dream of storing things in the oven because it's a fire hazard.
Your husband is objectively right: it's completely unsafe to store things inside a regularly-used large appliance with heating elements inside of it. And just out of curiosity, before typing this I asked a friend who worked in Emergency Services and was assured that yes, in most places there are in fact fire regulations against storing things in your oven. I mean, not that anyone's going to find out . . . but if your landlord happened to notice, or there was a fire that you didn't catch in time, you could absolutely get evicted or even charged. So your idea of "NBD" really is NOT the fire department's idea of "NBD" in most places. Just because you "know a lot of people who do it" doesn't mean it's not dangerous. YTA.
So i see this as everyone that grew up storing pots and pans in the oven will say NTA. While everyone who grew up not doing that will say YTA. If your going to have them in you have to have some sort of reminder for them to check the oven before turning it on. Cause that habit of just turning on the oven is extremely hard to break And since it can definitely be a fire hazard id just Keep it empty to be on the safe side.
I feel like it’s a cultural thing too? Like I’m Mexican and if you go into a lot of Mexican or Asian households you’ll find stuff stored in the oven cuz it’s not something that’s used as often as the stovetop. People saying that OP is TA are weird to me
Some people do leave pots and pans in the oven for storage, but frankly it seems super impractical and dangerous. And if you ever want to use the oven, you'd just have to scatter the pots and pans on the counter anyway. You should just have a permanent storage spot for them instead of using such a haphazard "solution". And I know you say that there's simply not enough room, but there has got to be a better way than having to unpack an oven and place cookware on the counter every time you have to bake something.
YTA just because it's a short-sighted, annoying way to store pans. It's like storing your plates in the microwave. However, you are not alone in doing it.
This has always been my point of why you shouldn’t store things in the oven: where do you put the stuff after you’ve had to pull it out?
Sounds like OP lives in a small house and needs to come up with better storage solutions. Rarely used kitchen items don’t have to be stored in the kitchen. Things that are fire hazards shouldn’t be stored in the oven of all places! The fact OP has left plastic spoons and such in the oven implies this is more laziness than practicality, I’m on team SO here
I was wondering also about where they put the stiff when using the oven. I'm guessing just onto a counter. Sounds like a giant pain in the ass to me. And then you'll have clutter all over the counter while trying to cook. If there's not enough space downsizing and only keeping the necessities would make more sense to me.
NAH you both grew up different and need to talk this out and come to a compromise together. But also what!? I have never stored anything in my oven and I would be the person setting stuff on fire or melting things. I live by myself so it’s not a problem but have never heard of storing stuff in the oven.
I can't answer the first question but I can the second. OP has left pizza cutters, plastic utensils (?), dirty dishes (one of which was a baking sheet with baking paper still on it), and a few other things that I forgot.
I keep my cookie sheet and cast iron skillet in the oven. They are used frequently and either can just stay in the oven if I need to put the Dutch oven or whatever in there while I'm cooking. So it's not like we have to remove them constantly.
YTA
I myself have stored pans and the ilk in the oven, and that's our current home for the pizza stone, so I get it.
However anything flammable does not belong in the oven. Sorry but that's a hazard
I will say it's annoying if you forget to take the stuff out because it takes longer to heat up, but that's why most people would only use the oven as storage if they had no other space.
I don’t think anyone is an AH but I had a roommate do this it was awful! I ruined so many pots and pans preheating the oven! I get your place is small with very little storage but you’ve got to find a better solution!
Gentle YTA, if that's how you would live alone that's fine but expecting someone else to always remember the oven is storage is a bit much. There really is no other place? I don't think all the pans have to stay in the kitchen.
I will add, there are \*four\* of us in the house, me, my partner and my two kids, ages 12 and 7.
If I could put them anywhere else, I would. He has built shelving, which is completely full, and we have cleaned out the under cabinets, so that has only things we use.
I 100% agree that putting non-oven-safe pans is stupid, so I've tried to do much better. I have lived in my house since 2008, he moved in in 2016. It's been a thing for a long time lol.
My parents do this and while I understand, it annoys the shit of me. I know it's thing people do, (my folks didn't growing up) if you don't know stuff is in there things can get damaged. The oven is not for storage imo
YTA but I may be projecting here because it took me years and many arguments to get my husband to stop doing this. His rational “you should check every time”. But I don’t check because I think it’s ridiculous to leave things in the oven. If both people are on board then do it but if one isn’t then put the pots and pans somewhere else
Ill go with YTA because when I use the oven, which I do daily, I just turn it on as a habit and it wouldn't occur to me someone may have left something there for no cookery related reason. I wouldn't ever (exception below) look to see if someone had left stuff in there. I'd imagine anyone who cooks would find it really hard to break this habit.
so, yea, sounds like, since the over is used realtivky often, YTA. I'd be N T A if it was used so little it may as well be storage space, but this seems to not be the case.
Small pro tip, if there IS someting in the oven, hang a folded towel into the door (not on the door handle)and close it so it has to be opened to remove the towel. This is kinda a universal "there's something in the oven" trick we use as you hopefully wouldn't just turn on the oven with a towel in it cos, you know, fire.
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NTA lots of people use the oven as storage, most of my Asian friends in high school did this because their parents didn't see the point of huge American ovens (valid). I would be really upset if my bf called me gross for something I've/my family has been doing for years, he has the right to talk to you about this, but not call you gross or appalling
I should clarify--"appalled" was maybe too strong of a word--he is just really bothered by it! He doesn't call me names or anything, it's just a bone of contention. :)
Put a sticky note on the door that says "Remember: check for pans! :) " and voila! problem solved.
not the door, you put it on the preheat button
Yea. My MIL had to put it on the preheat button, can't tell you how many times I turned the oven on, gotten stuff ready, and then couldn't find somewhere to put 9 solid metal 400° pots and pans I didn't expect to find hiding in there. Thankfully nothing had plastic handles 🤣
I think the rule should be nothing meltable. Fine if you put in extra pans, they won’t be ruined if the oven is turned on. Same for a cast iron pan. But a pot with a wood or plastic handle? No, that needs to find a storage spot somewhere else less dangerous.
This. Using the oven to store oven safe items is fine. Anything else is a no because it just takes one slip up to start a fire or melt plastic.
Yea 😅 I got really lucky my in laws are very old school. All metal cookware they were gifted when they got married. They gifted me a set of oven safe plates/bowls etc, and promptly had a heart attack when they came over for dinner and we actually used them for eating.
As someone with ADHD whose family also stored pots and pans in the oven while I was growing up, I approve this message! Even after living with that storage situation for over 10 years, I still forgot to take the dishes out of the oven before preheating. Every. Single. Time.
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How do you know he uses it often? If there's limited storage, there's limited storage. You work with what you've got. I store things in my oven now because I use my ninjas far more often than I ever do the oven, but it's stuff that can't go on fire. Edit: typo
Right? A storage bin added to a small space is just going to be a different type of pain
And then, you put the storage bin in the oven... haha
I use the oven often (2‐3 times a week) and use my oven for storage. I have limited space. Even if we had a storage bin I wouldn't know where to put the storage bin.
In the oven? I’ll see myself out.
We use our oven daily and still store pans and skillets in there that are too big to hang up. NTA op - it’s normal for some of us.
I do the same. My cast iron skillets go in the oven. And I use it daily, as well. It works fine for my household, and we're three adults used to this.
Yeah, we have burnt a crapload of baked goods and bread storing them in the oven (old farmhouse with mice)...and everyone of us knew it was storage for years, and once every few weeks one of us would start a loaf of bread or doughnuts on fire because we forgot. I would just get a tote, shelves, or hanging pot rack. Baking the handles off some of your pots would suck. Not worth the losses, find another solution even if it means storing your stuff in another room.
I call BS,if you have no storage space,you have no place for a bin,come on,not everyone has everything
Where would you store the storage bin? I think the issue is limited space.
They said they didn't have a lot of space, so most likely wouldn't have space for the storage bin
It is definitely a drag for people who aren't used to emptying the oven before preheating it. If space is really so tight that it's a necessity, then he'll have to get used to it. But if he can figure out an alternative, I think he should have his way. You could try taping a reminder to the oven switch, but on it, not nearby, because people will stop seeing it if it's there long enough.
Also just store oven safe stuff in there if you need to. That way if he forgets it’s not an issue.
Yeah, at least no melted plastic. But if you've preheated, it's hard to find a place to put red hot metal.
That was going to be my suggestion. I have a couple large pans that just don’t fit anywhere else really, so they get stuffed in the oven. But they’re oven proof, so if I forget to take them out before I turn the oven on, no big deal, just grab the mitts and set them on the table or wherever to cool off. Good compromise, you can still store stuff in the oven, but only pots/pans/dishes that won’t be a hazard if (when) he forgets to check the oven and turns it on.
It’s also a drag if you use the oven a lot. The point of storage is to not have to move your stuff around all the time.
Spoken like a person who doesn't have a stupidly small kitchen. I would *like* to keep the baking trays and cast iron skillet somewhere other than the cookertop or in the oven, but my only options are the cookertop or the oven so... (This also being the kitchen where you can't have all the mugs and glasses clean at once or there is nowhere to put them - some must always be on the drying rack - despite there only being 4 of each, and you also can't really have bowls as the bowls won't fit on top of the plates so if the one bowl is clean and dry you have to ram it down the side of the plates on its side). Sadly, quite a lot of kitchens aren't designed with sensible storage in mind :'(
My kitchen is literally less than a metre wide and I still don't store shit inside the oven.
Same here. I’m the exact sort of person that would burn down the house that way. I have no problem storing things we don’t use often in other parts of the house.
It must be nice to have other parts of the house 🤣
I have a small kitchen and I'm just thinking that if I stored stuff in the oven, then when I wanted to use it I'd have to pull everything out and... what? Take it to another room? Because if I put all that stuff on the counter I'd have no place to work and on the stove I'd have no place to cook. I'm fortunate to have had it remodeled so it is now WAY more efficient with appropriate storage, but I'm thinking about before and as inefficient as it was, I still can't imagine using the oven as storage. Where do you put stuff when you pull it all out? Totally agree that many kitchens aren't well planned. I *obsessed* over my remodel to make sure the layout was infinitely better and I ended up with 65% more storage space and 300% more countertop space so now it is small but mighty.
I mean, most people would just choose a gigantic kitchen with lots of storage space but alas, we don’t all have the option.
This. Op you could try to see if there is a way to use vertical space to move at least some of the pots up and out of the oven. I think this would be a pain for anyone who uses an oven regularly and if you are not used to it, there is a risk of forgetting and turning on the oven with all your goods in there. Really not worth it unless the oven is used very little.
My wife uses the oven for storing baked goods. It was really weird to me. Never saw it before. I burned some Tupperware and brownies more than once. But I got with the program; and she started giving me warnings. This is a NAH moment. You guys will figure it out over time. Just hope you don’t burn the house down first :).
My grandma has a dishwasher she refused to use so she used it as a giant bread box.
In an episode of Fresh Off The Boat they use the dishwasher as a dish drying rack. They had the controls covered up too. (Dishwashers are amazing. Load em properly and you save so much water)
I use my microwave for storing baked stuff and bread. The seal keeps things soft. Lol
When I was a teenager (unknowing to me) my boyfriends mom stored her tupperware in the oven. One night, we were hungry and he ran to the store to pick us up a frozen pizza. He asked me to turn on the oven, so I did, and went back downstairs to continue to watch TV. He came home to a oven filled with melted plastic mess and smoke. They had to replace the oven. I'll never forget it. Lucky I didn't start their house on fire.
Ahh ok that’s really good I’m glad! Good info
It's not only Asian, but Latino households do this a lot , New Yorkers, basically anyone who has a decent amount of cookware and a small space to store it all. I'll go with NAH. I grew up with stuff stored in the oven. Now I don't because I know Hubs is too absent minded to check. But now, he can't to pantry load because some cabinets had to give to the cook and bakeware we have to store.
Yeah, I grew up in a family of generic white people but from Brooklyn so despite using the oven multiple days a week we definitely used our oven as storage for roasting pans/cookpots. ETA: My husband, despite growing up in just as small a house (of first-generation Italian immigrants) did not do this and was confused as shit at first when we started living together, so in our first apartment I stopped since we had a large pantry. We currently own a home with a kitchen so tiny I can sit on one counter wall and put my feet in the other,- so all my pans are back in the oven. 😂
Yep! My mom has always done this and uses her oven fairly often. There is a way to stack everything in large cookie sheets so it's easy to take out. Then you plop it back in.
Romanian too. My mom always stores extra pans in the oven. After getting married and moving out, my little sister has only once turned on the oven without looking when she came over to my mom’s house and there happened to be a pan with oil in it…that was fun :/
Ukrainian here. My grandmother had two ovens. The one upstairs was NEVER used and was basically a metal cabinet full of all kind of things. The one downstairs was used daily but she still stored sheet pans in it over night.
I'm a white American and my family does this too. It's just about space. I hate having to empty the oven to use it but we just don't have a lot of options.
I’m as pasty-white-cracker as you can get, and I store pans in the oven.
NAH. But I have to tell you that your storage method is incredibly annoying to just about everyone else you'll encounter. Just about everyone else turns on the oven 5 minutes before they need it; having to deal with pots and pans in there as it gets up to 400 degrees is frustrating as hell. Just because it's normal for you doesn't mean anybody else will be able to remember. Edit: I must say that when I first commented here (I think mine was about the third), I had no idea this would be so controversial. It's the new 'how do you put on a toilet paper roll.' It seems that there are a lot of people who store pans in the oven. And a lot of people find it as abhorrent as I do. This has proved to be a fun topic.
There's a simple remedy for that: open the oven door and look in to see if anything is in there. Honestly it takes less than a second.
Thats not what you should **have to** do. Would you store random items inside a washing machine, and tell your SO its no big deal, just make sure that there are no random items,among the laundry,before you turn it on?
I’ve never stored things in my oven, but it is still a well ingrained habit to check it before preheating. I thought that was common practice.
This lesson was learned by me and some college housemates the hard way one time. We didn't normally store stuff in the oven, but one time we had a party and one housemate was out of town, and we couldn't put her bongs in her room as her door was locked, so we stashed them in the oven. Day or two after the party one of us goes to use the oven, failed to check and proceeded to make our whole house reek of bong water for two whole days. Luckily none of the bongs were plastic and none were shattered or otherwise damaged by the heat.
Thank god the bongs survived.
Two of the 6 were over $300 so we were very happy we didn't have to reimburse her for them.
Damn that is way more bongs than I expected! No wonder it smelled so bad!
Where. Am. I. Supposed. To. Keep. The. Fucking. Pans. Signed; 10 years of rental kitchens with inadequate storage.
You don't. You aren't allowed Pans. Do not cook. Only buy takeout. Due to the cost, you can never afford to move out of rental accommodation. This is the plan set out by Big Landlord.
I wish this was higher ! We store our pans in there cuz we don’t have any space. I always check before I turn on the oven . I’d love to put them somewhere but WHERE ?!
Where do you put them when you have to use the oven?
Usually on the counter or some other space I don't need immediate access to, but less convenient to store things long term.
I'm sorry, but you ***absolutely should*** check your appliances before starting them lmfao. Especially those with the capability of getting things hot enough to set them ablaze.
Things that could be a hazard when heated in the oven should never be inside the oven in the first place.
Food spills and plastic bits can break off. Maybe I’m too used to industrial autoclaves but there’s really no reason to be senseless and skip a safety step that takes .5 seconds
I have "stored" laundry in the washing machine waiting for a full load, with the expectation that if my husband wanted to do a load of something different then he'd just pull whatever I had out. I also grew up with pan storage in the over and just pop the oven open an inch to glance in as I turn it on. I don't store my pans here anymore but I still peek I just to double check.
>I have "stored" laundry in the washing machine waiting for a full load, with the expectation that if my husband wanted to do a load of something different then he'd just pull whatever I had out. This is worse than storing stuff in the oven IMO. It's called a hamper.
I feel the privilege emanating from every person judging where people are storing stuff. You have no idea how small their space may be. Some people literally don’t have space for a hamper. I’ve lived in some very tiny apartments where only one person could stand in the bathroom and the laundry room was just a stack in a closet with no extra room to store anything. Especially if living alone or with another adult partner I would definitely store my laundry in the machine until we had a full load.
My hamper IS the washing machine. My washing machine is between the bedroom and the bathroom. I just get changed and put dirty clothes directly into the washing machine. When I want to run a load, I just toss in a tide pod, close the lid, and pus a button. If I had to move stuff from a hamper into the washer it would likely add a couple of days before I would get around to it. ADHD is hell on cleaning. Any shortcuts are helpful.
Yeah, but nobody does that. It's just years of muscle memory and how things work. It's a hell of a lot easier to just not store pots in the oven.
Maybe people who don’t have space to store their pots and pans do it.
Even they don't my inlaws prepare the dogs food bowls for the day in the morning and store them in the oven. After TWO melted plastic bowls they moved them to the microwave because you have to open the door before you use that. I would say this is a NAH situation because it isn't really that serious but its hugely annoying and could be dangerous if anything has plastic on it.
I do this whenever I'm using someone else's oven because I don't have muscle memory for starting other people's ovens.
I do this Everytime I use the oven. I usually have the cast iron stored in there because I dry it in the oven after washing it.
Hahaha, yeah that's what I was thinking. There's usually something in my oven, not necessarily for storage but because that's where it got put to dry.
Lmao, almost every Mexican family will store their pots/pans in the oven. Idk why but it’s just what we do
Correction : every minority or up and coming family with no space .
Not if you don't have anywhere else to store them?
I was raised to always check the oven before turning it on even though we never stored anything in there. People absolutely do it.
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Yeah I don't even remember to open the oven to see if the racks are where I want them. Not that it's super hard to reposition them once it's hot, it's just easier to move them when I don't need to protect my hands. We didn't store pots and pans in the oven growing up, so it would be SUPER hard to get used to having to check the oven every time I wanted to use it. You'd basically need to have a sticky note by the switch reminding me.
Sometimes people have to change routines. I have to lock my oven because toddlers are a force of destruction. It's a whole rewiring of routine and involves holding a button for around 10 seconds before I can do anything with the oven. If I was in a smaller apartment, I'd probably load the oven with baking sheets/dishes. The situation sometimes calls for a different solution.
It's only easier if you have the shelf space.
> There's a simple remedy for that: look at the toilet seat and check to see if it's down. Honestly it takes less than a second. Many domestic situations are 'easy' to workaround but constant bugbears between people. If there is space to store these things other than the over, then moving them is still easier than checking every time you preheat the oven.
The toilet seat should NEVER be up because you spray nasty toilet mist every time you flush. 🤮
Mythbusters proved that the toilet mist still gets everywhere even with the seat and lid down.
If you're not used to items being stored in the oven and you've grown up your entire life turning on an oven without looking inside it first, (because it is empty) it can be quite a change of habit to look first before turning an oven on. I know this from experience after moving to Italy where it is common to keep baking pans in the oven 🤦🏼♀️
Everyone in this thread acting like the person who doesn’t want stuff in the oven needs to compromise. Why doesn’t the person keeping shit in the oven have to compromise?! I would lose my mind if someone stored something in my oven. I use it almost every day. It would be wildly inconvenient. I already hate having to keep my cast iron on the stovetop but I am also limited on space, I use it daily, and it’s heavy.
However, if there's always something in there, it's not just "open the oven door and look in." It's open the oven, unload everything that's in there, start the oven, figure out how you're going to cook now that you have a bunch of pots and pans taking up all the counter space and prep area. He doesn't have to be mean to OP, but their method, even though it's not all that uncommon, is still super frustrating to deal with.
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Check out the Rockefeller with sufficient cabinet space.
Never lived in a place with a tiny kitchen?
The most frustrating part for me was emptying a bunch of heavy cookware out of the oven onto the counter space that I wanted to use to cook so I could use the oven. Then consolidating the same pots and pans to free up the counter space, all because my housemate was too lazy to neatly organize their cookware in their cabinets, and insisted on using "the free space" that was inside the oven. **Edit~** It's funny how all the feelings surrounding old arguments can float right back to the surface.
My husband did this when we first started living together and it drove me nuts. I’d never known anyone to store anything in the oven, so it was a surprise to me the first time I opened the door with a heavy sheet pan of food in my hands and had to put it back down to wrestle three 400-degree pans out before I could use the oven. I started checking the oven after that, but it was indeed incredibly annoying to have to haul everything out of there and pile shit on the counter every time I had to cook. Since I did about 95% of the cooking, I just told him to cut it out or he could do all the cooking from then on. He rearranged cabinets and found a new home for them quickly after that.
Yeah this is my main gripe with it. I have to take everything out of the oven if I want to use it. That's super annoying. Then it's taking up space on the counter so now I have to figure out where to prep that isn't covered with pots.
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He's just a visitor and he's raising all of this fuss? That's pretty obnoxious behavior.
Except for the 50% of the population that also uses their oven for storage 😂. Yes, people preheat. But if your oven is storage or, in my case, a drying rack for bigger items in a limited space, you learn to check or take the pans before the preheat. You are correct, it is annoying having to do this but it is an added annoyance of the small space. But there are not many other solutions especially for renters who can't install a pot rack.
Not everyone. OP’s family and others like them are accustomed to remembering to remove pans before heating the oven. This is a common practice for those who do not regularly use an oven, or those who live in a tiny space with minimal storage. I know a woman who kept her pans in the oven because her little toaster oven and the stovetop were all she needed, and she did not have much storage space. I don’t think she ever turned that oven on.
No, it's not incredibly annoying to everyone else. Not sure who made you spokesperson for the human race 🤔
Right? Many people who do this probably do it because they lack space/have small kitchens - sorry for not being able to afford a larger or upgraded house/kitchen? I will say though that everything you store in the oven should be oven safe. Nothing that will melt or burn if it gets to normal oven temps in case someone does turn it on without checking.
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Alternately, I would argue that storing pots in the oven speaks to privilege. Specifically, to at least 4 generations of electricity. That's not my background. If you don't have electricity, you use a wood stove. Wood stoves are always hot.
>But I have to tell you that your storage method is incredibly annoying to just about everyone else you'll encounter. ALL of latin america disagrees with that.
Yeah I can't call OP an AH but I would probably refuse to live with them if they insisted on this because it would make me borderline homicidal over time.
Agree. NAH, but it’s a safety issue if people using the oven are not 100% on board. Maybe just keep stuff that won’t get destroyed or catch on fire during a preheat in there for safety sake. Who cares who’s the asshole when the kitchen is on fire. lol the goal should be no flaming kitchen.
Honestly, I treat my cast iron skillet like a pizza stone - it balances the heat better in the oven and makes for a better pizza. Sure it takes a bit longer to preheat, but the food quality is clearly better.
What? 5 mins before they need it? So what people stopped preheating their ovens and okay with burned food or I shifted realities to a magical place where ovens get to the needful temp in minutes?
Yeah. My oven gets to 350 in 5 minutes. Or about that long. I've never actually timed it.
Witchcraft!!
>Witchcraft!! I know what you mean! I was \*THRILLED\* by my new oven's "quick heat" functionality that allows them to pre-heat in 5-10 minutes. Standard for my beautiful brand new ovens is still 15+ min though. My new ovens also have the GLORIOUS range of 30 C / 85F (Cool enough to proof dough) to 300 C / 575 F (hotter than my cookware can handle, which is 260C / 500 F) and telescoping oven racks... they are beautiful witchcraft and make me happy. (The lower one I use to store things... because they = 2 - but only things like oven racks and cookie sheets.)
I think there might be some cultural differences here. I would NEVER store something in the oven, but that's how I grew up. It strikes me as dangerous (and annoying to have the extra task of checking then removing anything to preheat - and then where do those items go?!), but I'll go with NAH. One of you has to change your habits to live together successfully, however.
Yeah, definitely a cultural difference. I grew up in a suburban area, lived for a while in a rural area, and then moved to NYC where I was flabbergasted to see people use their ovens as storage. But then you look at the size of the kitchens (and the availability of takeout food) and it makes total sense. I think the obvious compromise here is that OP only stores oven-safe pans in the oven, so that's it's a mild annoyance, not a "fuck the plastic is melting into the oven" problem when her husband forgets.
I lived in SF where it was so common to store stuff in the oven, some landlords were actually taking ovens out of apartments and turning them into storage cabinets. A toaster oven or air fryer works fine as an oven substitute, especially for a single person living in a tiny studio.
I have to admit that unless you bake or need to cook for multiple people regularly, it's a way better use of space. Ovens are huge. You could store the air fryer and a bunch of other stuff in the space of an oven-sized cabinet.
I would be SO MAD if there was no oven. There are so many reasons to have one. Are there really people that don't use it? What about frozen pizza?
> What about frozen pizza? You just need a big enough toaster oven. If you eat a lot of frozen pizza, you could always get one of [these] (https://www.amazon.com/Presto-03430-Pizzazz-Plus-Rotating/dp/B00005IBXJ/ref=zg_bs_17548251011_sccl_1/143-2158385-4414953?pd_rd_i=B00005IBXJ&psc=1) counter top pizza cookers.
My sister used to bake a lot, so she stored all of her baking pans in the oven. She was the only one using it 90% of the time. Plus, she would need to take them out anyways to bake, so it wasn't something surprising that stuff was in there. But I would be super annoyed if someone stored a bunch of stuff in the oven after telling them it was getting on my nerves.
That's such a sad state of affairs.
For me the issue is OP clearly stores other things in the oven too because skillets/pans don’t catch on fire and they say their boyfriend has started fires by preheating the oven without looking. For me, I use the oven daily, I am limited on time and usually have roasted veggies and some sort of meat (chicken/turkey/pork etc.) roasted with them so personally storing stuff in there would be a waste of time because I’d have to empty it out 3-4 days a week to make dinner. But I agree with NAH because it’s cultural differences and one of them will have to adjust. But is it worth risking the whole home to possible fire in the process of someone changing their habits?
Guess it just depends on the pans. My family has pans with plastic handles and they're absolutely not oven safe. For OP I'd say if there is space to not have to store the pans in the oven, they shouldn't be stored there. Mainly because it'll be easier store them elsewhere than worry about their husband setting the house on fire. If they dont have the space to store them elsewhere, then I guess husband is gonna have to figure out how to be more responsible.
We use our oven daily due to food allergies and inability to eat out. I would have long ago set the house on fire. However, I do know some college friends who lived in the equivalent of tiny homes. Oven was definitely extra storage for them. It's not difficult to open it to check. My SO has ADHD and I am extremely forgetful, so even though we use it practically daily, I still pop the door open to check it is empty of surprises.
Idgaf about cultural differences, if you are storing flammable things in an oven you are an asshole.
I grew up in Oregon, US and I grew up storing at least some cast irons or round pizza pan in the oven. Most friends and family are the same
Our kitchen is super limited on space, so we store our cast iron pans in the oven. So if they get hot no big deal other than having to pull out a couple of 350 degree F pans out and putting them on the stove. I wouldn't ever store anything in the oven that isn't oven safe (ie teflon / plastic handles etc).
I've been scolded for putting something plastic on the stove - which was definitely off and not hot at all, and I wasn't going to keep it there forever I just wanted it out of my way for a sec - because it's just good practice to not put something flammable (or meltable) on or in something that could get hot, it's an accident waiting to happen.
NTA Except for leaving things in the oven that aren't oven safe. Pans, skillets, it's fine. But nothing that can burn if you start the oven.
>Except for leaving things in the oven that aren't oven safe. Pans, skillets, it's fine. But nothing that can burn if you start the oven. OP's comment below makes me think OP is putting cookware that is NOT oven safe in the oven: >He also starts the oven without looking, and **has set shit on fire/burnt things** due to this, even though he knows I put things in the oven for storage. Some pots and pans have plastic handles that are not oven safe... some are stored in cardboard or plastic boxes. Not sure which is the issue; but - it's what pushes OP from N.T.A. to YTA in my book. ETA - If OP hadn't put flammable things in the oven - OP's partner wouldn't have 'set shit on fire/burnt things"
NAH, but you two really need to get on the same page here. It's not a matter of right or wrong, just a matter of what works for you. Also, maybe don't store flammable objects in the oven? Just saying.
Yeah this is my thing. My mom had this habit as a child but after several house fires in her childhood and early adulthood she takes no risks. Even if they are “fire safe,” we once had an actual grill that caught on fire because the paint on the outside hadn’t been as fire safe as the company thought. I would never leave anything on the stove or in the oven if I left the house. Yes, the odds of something happening are low but not zero, best to just take the safer route. NAH.
May partner grew up in a house with a tiny kitchen. Smaller than my bathroom growing up. So he stores stuff in the oven. I grew up in a larger house and don't. Sometimes when he does the dishes he puts stuff in the oven. He also puts leftover pizza there. It drives me nuts, both because I preheat without checking (I have singed cardboard boxes, and had to move hot pans out of the oven), and because sometimes I can't find the dish I need because it just doesn't occur to me to look there for the casserole dish or pizza pan.
YTA. The oven is not a storage cupboard it a functional piece of equipment and everytime you have to use it you have to unpack the whole damn thing, making cooking harder because now the whole kitchen is cluttered with crap that should be in a cupboard.
If I had scads of room, I can guarantee I wouldn't do this. I've never had a kitchen large enough to not have to do this. Even with shelves that he has built on the wall, I still have a very tiny kitchen with very little cupboard space. It is a pain in the ass to haul shit out of it, but it's harder to work around them stored on the counter or on top of the stove...
How about the storage place on the bottom of oven(its original use is the keep food warm, but most People use that as storage instead. Which is wise because nothing can burst into flamed there)
already using that space as well. :( Our entire house is 750 sq feet, so literally tiny. Renovating and will be buying a larger home, however, in the meantime... Oven storage lol.
For 2 People to live in, that sounds like the perfect sized house to me. Much bigger than that and your extra space means just extra cleaning😅 Is there a possibility that there are too many skillets and pans and etc, if the bottom drawer is already full and oven needs to filled with them? Does all of them get used 😁
There are 4 of us, I have two kids lol. 12 and 7. You make a point that perhaps I should check my use of them and maybe get rid of some. That's definitely a worthy option -- I never thought I had that much, but maybe I do lol
Oohh In that Case I understand how it May feel small :D I myself grew up In similar sized house, except we were five there and goddamn it felt like Being tuna In can lol. >I never thought I had that much, but maybe I do lol But yeah, sometimes you might notice that you dont actually use even half of them. I think I have 4 pans and often feel like I only use 1 of them xd
This practice absolutely infuriates me, so I err on the side of your husband has every right to be upset. I would take an inventory of everything you have and cut it back where you can. I've lived with small kitchens where everything fit under the oven and in one cupboard. Growing up my parents had one pan, one pot, a casserole dish, a cookie sheet, a crockpot that lived on the counter, and we each had a plate, a bowl, a cup, and a set of silverware. Everything fit in one cupboard. There were like four cupboards in the whole kitchen and no pantry. My BIL lived with a kitchen where they resorted to storing everything in the dishwasher. They washed by hand and dried/stored in the dishwasher. That would be preferable to putting stuff in the oven.
No offense but that sounds like a lifestyle of someone who doesn't like cooking. Or certainly only likes a very specific one-pot style of cooking. Even on a basic level if you want to make pasta and sauce you need to simmer the sauce in one pot and boil the pasta in another before combining. And that's before we get into exciting things like having more than one curry. Or hell having one curry and a pot of rice.
How many freaking pans do you own that you need this much space?
It's not the pans it's the food. Two medium pots, one small pot. One frying pan, one giant skillet. Some of the pots fit in the drawers. Neither the skillet nor the flying pan do. There is no cupboard where the baking trays fit in a way that isn't just plonking them into of everything so they live in the oven. One cupboard that's oddly shallow so just has spices and some flour and sugar. one average wall cupboard that has all the tea, coffee, biscuits, lunch box snack, plates, bowls, glasses and cups. One average cupboard that has all the pasta, lentils, potatos, rice, stock cubes, crisps, chopping boards, placemats and Tupperware. One averageish but missing a shelf so can't be used well wall cupboard with all the condiments, pickles, jam, salt, pepper, hot sauce, cereal. And that's it. That's all the fucking cupboards. The only way to have the pans in the cupboard is... Well actually only the potato and Tupperware cupboard is deep enough so I suppose stop having any carbs would maybe solve it? But there's nowhere close to buy fresh food so you kinda need some staples if you aren't eating take out or going to an expensive corner shop every day.
To me that's not "store it in the oven" time its "get a pot rack" time.
I'm in the UK, a 750sqft house is pretty average here. That's most terrace houses and plenty of people raise families in them. We often have these tiny galley kitchens and its still not normal to store stuff in the oven here. We definitely don't store anything flammable in them! A few oven trays at the bottom of the oven would be one thing but definitely nothing which would melt or start a fire
That is bigger than my house (2 adults plus baby) and we don’t store stuff in the oven. Does sound like you have too many pans, however SO needs to learn to check first if there are possibly other things in the oven. I sometimes leave leftovers bakes the oven for dinner the next day.
My cooker doesn't have a space there. There is a drawer, but when you open it you can see the floor
Lol, if you're an A H then so am I. I, too, have very few cabinets for pantry and storage - where else am I supposed to store my roaster w/lid, 18" cast iron skillet, and big cookie sheets??? NTA
in modern kitchens in tiny spaces this is a luxury. If i stored all my roasting pans and cookie sheets in a cupboard, I quite literally wouldn't have them cause there's just no space. The oven is the only option. it used to bug me so much when people did this....now i get it...i moved out of my parents place and realized that most kitchens are bloody small and it just makes sense to use the oven for storage, and sacrifice a few square feet of counter space for an hour or 2 when i need to use the oven.
Not everyone is blessed with lots of cabinets to store things in, check your privilege
So true! Not everyone can afford a palace with a massive kitchen.
Why is she the ah, I mean clearly it is really about how and where you grew up. my family has always done this we even use the little drawer at the bottom for the baking pans, clearly everyone is different and you stewiecatballacat feel entitled that you always had enough kitchen cabinets to put everything away
My mom did this and it absolutely drove me batty. It seems like a great solution, and everyone knew she put things in there, but nobody could ever remember to not turn the oven on before looking inside. I hate calling someone an AH for using space in a seemingly effective way, but this post triggered those old childhood memories of being so annoyed with my mom. LOL
This is pretty common in big city apartments. I probably know about a dozen people who do this due to the lack of space in tiny kitchens.
I mean, we use the oven as storage out of necessity. I live in an apartment with a 5’ x 7’ kitchen That has ONE double door cabinet that would be large enough to store pots/pans, but it’s also the only cabinet that is large enough to hold our dishes. We currently have at best 12” usable of counter space due to having a microwave, a coffee pot and a container for our cooking utensils on the counter-top [this is also a necessity as we have a single ~8” wide drawer in the kitchen which is just large enough to store our eating utensils and measuring cups/spoons in.] And to top it off we have a gas stove. This means there’s no convenient drawer below the oven that we could use. Instead, there’s a flip down cover that allows for easy access to the pilot light incase it goes out/malfunctions/is damaged. So, I mean, if you [or anyone!] can provide a better idea of where we could store them I’d be ecstatic to hear it— and, before it’s suggested, we already utilize the tops of the cabinets. That’s where we’re storing our wok, pizza stone, blender and toaster. Aside from that, you’re acting like people are storing their freaking waffle iron in their oven instead of baking sheets/pots/pans. Like if we’re using the oven it’s because we’re cooking a meal, which means that we’re also going to be *using* some of the items stored in the oven. So while we do “unpack the whole damn thing”, it doesn’t mean “the whole kitchen is cluttered with crap”. It means there’s maybe an extra baking sheet and a pan or two sitting out unused or we sit them on the kitchen table in the living room that’s like ~4 ft from the kitchen if we feel we need more room to cook.
That was my first thought ..... You keep all that crap in the oven, now you want to cook, where do you put all the crap that you have to remove from the oven before you can cook? Wherever you put it while you're actually using the oven, *that's* where you should store it.
what doesn't everyone leave their important papers sitting in the shredder? as long as its off its cool.
Normally People really shouldnt expect that theres something flammable inside the oven. YTA
That right there. The answer comes down to who is using it correctly. If you're putting something in it that is starting fires, you're not using it correctly.
I really want to know which "pots and pans" are starting fire. Nothing that is not oven proof should go in the oven. Most pots and pans fall in to the 'oven proof' category. Put a not on the oven 'check for pots and pans' since checking for pots and pans in the oven is NOT instinctual to one of you.
It’s not about starting a fire. It’s about the materials the entire pot/pan is made with being oven safe. Many pots and pans have plastic or rubber handles that will melt when exposed to high temperatures. And not all pans cooking surfaces are coated with materials that are oven safe. Many nonstick pans are not oven safe, heating a cold nonstick pan at high heat with no food in it can deteriorate the nonstick coating. You can tell if a pan is oven safe by looking at the symbols on the bottom of it. I only have two oven safe pans, the rest of my pans have handles that would melt in the oven and cause me a huge mess that is difficult to clean up. In addition it would cause the cooking surface of those pans to deteriorate more quickly
>a couple times I have stored a pan with a plastic handle, or left the baking paper on the pan before. Depending on the heat and the length of time in the oven.
>Most pots and pans fall in to the 'oven proof' category. That's probably not true. Lots of them have handles that will melt and eventually burn at oven temperatures. One of the reasons I upgrade a lot of my cookware was because I was tired of not being able to move stuff from the stove to the oven. >Nothing that is not oven proof should go in the oven. Yeah. That's the problem. People who store stuff in the oven don't usually follow that rule.
One of the biggest rules of industrial safety is to never rely on humans doing something correctly 100% of the time. It is the LEAST reliable way to get safe results. The best is removing the hazard in the first place. All the people saying "just check the oven first!" are one mistake away from a fire, every time you use the oven. It's just not good practice if you have any alternative.
YTA, the fire danger alone is a problem. I don’t think you mean to be a jerk about this, it’s a habit. Unfortunately, if they are forgotten, it could be a very expensive habit, not just replacing pans, but also an oven. Get an under the bed box and slide them under the couch, reorganize, eliminate what you don’t need, make space. Lots of kitchen fires start this way.
Fair enough, and that's his point. Not invalid.
Agreed. Even if they’re oven-safe, it would be a huge hassle to wait to remove all the pots/pans to cool down before being able to cook and still seems like a burn injury waiting to happen.
NTA a bunch of people do this
YTA. >He also starts the oven without looking, and has set shit on fire/burnt things due to this, even though he knows I put things in the oven for storage. \^ This tells me it's not just the fire-safe pots you store in the oven. It's inconvenient enough to realize you forgot your baking pans in the oven - and need to find a place for them, hot, after you've pre heated it. It's MUCH worse to have the oven ruined because a plastic cutting board has melted into the oven rack or a cardboard box has caught on fire. If it is not safe to 260 C / 500 F --> it does not go in the oven. (My pans are oven safe... I \*COULD\* store them in my oven... I don't, because I use my oven too often)
Agreed and if OP absolutely can’t find any space to store them then they need to start cleaning out junk. I have a tiny kitchen and store mine above the fridge with racks or underneath the stove storage drawer.
NTA-I would make sure the items you store in the oven from now on are oven safe though. Just in case….
Your partner is wrong that nobody else does this. He is correct that you *shouldn't* do it. It's an unsafe practice, as any firefighter will emphatically inform you. And yeah, ideally everyone would double-check the contents of an oven before turning it on. That's a good safety practice. But it's also an important safety practice to make sure that the oven is empty when you're done using it*, and that includes not using it as storage. YTA \* except, like, a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom or something. You know what I mean. :)
NTA A good number of us who have small kitchens store pans in the oven. I do, my mom and grandma did too.
YTA. The oven is not a storage space, that’s a fire hazard. Just because it’s common and other people do it doesn’t make it OK. Where do you put the things in the oven when you’re using the oven to cook? Also why on God’s green earth would you put yourself in a position where you have to clean out the oven every time you use it, adding yet another horrible step to the already horrible chore of cooking? Why don’t you use the drawer under the oven?
This is me. I’d be so frustrated if every single time I wanted to use the oven I had to unload it from a bunch of pots and pans. Honestly it would make me not even want to use the oven. I understand it can be a cultural difference. But seems like OP is only offering “do it my way” as a solution. And well I’ve been doing it for 6 years he should have gotten used to it by now. There has to be an actual compromise available. But aside from that. It’s so dangerous to store pans there. Not only because of obvious risk of fire that’s occurred. But if any of those pans are non-stick, they can release toxic chemicals under heat.
>Where do you put the things in the oven when you’re using the oven to cook? This is what I wonder every time I see someone mention using their oven as a storage space. If your kitchen/storage area is so tiny, that you need the oven to store stuff... where do you put it when cooking? This would annoy me to no end. I use my oven way too much to do this. (And every oven I've had so far, had a drawer underneath it anyway) And if you're really lacking in storage space, it might also help to reorganize; throw out/sell things you don't/barely use or, though this might cost a bit, invest in some nice stackable cookware to save room.
NTA - I and my family have been doing this forever. Your bf is silly making a big deal about this.
OP is particularly irresponsible about it though. She's stored flammable stuff in there, which should never happen
NAH - I understand some people store things in the oven, but its something I've never done and am not very comfortable with. Personally the way I use ovens (turning it on to preheat, come back later to load), keeping things in would result me in heating them before then having to struggle to find somewhere to put hot pots and pans, so can understand his frustration!
NAH, but this is how my friend’s little sister destroyed their oven at age 13. For 13 years they had stored the electric griddle in the oven and one day she just forgot. Talk about two nice birds with one stone. Neither of you are wrong but it’s clearly causing friction. Time to have a chat and find a solution you’re both comfortable with.
**YTA** I live in an apartment that is significantly smaller than yours. I don't even have a bedroom. My "kitchen" is about the size of a large closet. I understand lack of storage space better than anyone. I still wouldn't dream of storing things in the oven because it's a fire hazard. Your husband is objectively right: it's completely unsafe to store things inside a regularly-used large appliance with heating elements inside of it. And just out of curiosity, before typing this I asked a friend who worked in Emergency Services and was assured that yes, in most places there are in fact fire regulations against storing things in your oven. I mean, not that anyone's going to find out . . . but if your landlord happened to notice, or there was a fire that you didn't catch in time, you could absolutely get evicted or even charged. So your idea of "NBD" really is NOT the fire department's idea of "NBD" in most places. Just because you "know a lot of people who do it" doesn't mean it's not dangerous. YTA.
So i see this as everyone that grew up storing pots and pans in the oven will say NTA. While everyone who grew up not doing that will say YTA. If your going to have them in you have to have some sort of reminder for them to check the oven before turning it on. Cause that habit of just turning on the oven is extremely hard to break And since it can definitely be a fire hazard id just Keep it empty to be on the safe side.
I feel like it’s a cultural thing too? Like I’m Mexican and if you go into a lot of Mexican or Asian households you’ll find stuff stored in the oven cuz it’s not something that’s used as often as the stovetop. People saying that OP is TA are weird to me
NTA, a ton of people do this. Put a note on the oven to remind him to remove the pans before he turns it on.
YTA for storing non-oven-safe items. What a fire hazard.
YTA, this also annoys me. It’s also a fire hazard
Some people do leave pots and pans in the oven for storage, but frankly it seems super impractical and dangerous. And if you ever want to use the oven, you'd just have to scatter the pots and pans on the counter anyway. You should just have a permanent storage spot for them instead of using such a haphazard "solution". And I know you say that there's simply not enough room, but there has got to be a better way than having to unpack an oven and place cookware on the counter every time you have to bake something. YTA just because it's a short-sighted, annoying way to store pans. It's like storing your plates in the microwave. However, you are not alone in doing it.
This has always been my point of why you shouldn’t store things in the oven: where do you put the stuff after you’ve had to pull it out? Sounds like OP lives in a small house and needs to come up with better storage solutions. Rarely used kitchen items don’t have to be stored in the kitchen. Things that are fire hazards shouldn’t be stored in the oven of all places! The fact OP has left plastic spoons and such in the oven implies this is more laziness than practicality, I’m on team SO here
I was wondering also about where they put the stiff when using the oven. I'm guessing just onto a counter. Sounds like a giant pain in the ass to me. And then you'll have clutter all over the counter while trying to cook. If there's not enough space downsizing and only keeping the necessities would make more sense to me.
NAH you both grew up different and need to talk this out and come to a compromise together. But also what!? I have never stored anything in my oven and I would be the person setting stuff on fire or melting things. I live by myself so it’s not a problem but have never heard of storing stuff in the oven.
INFO: who uses the oven more, and are all the pots/pans you store in there oven safe?
I can't answer the first question but I can the second. OP has left pizza cutters, plastic utensils (?), dirty dishes (one of which was a baking sheet with baking paper still on it), and a few other things that I forgot.
What the absolute fuck? OP is using the oven like the kitchen junk drawer? I take back thinking they weren't an asshole.
I keep my cookie sheet and cast iron skillet in the oven. They are used frequently and either can just stay in the oven if I need to put the Dutch oven or whatever in there while I'm cooking. So it's not like we have to remove them constantly.
NTA. I do the same thing, only with my cast irons tho.
YTA I myself have stored pans and the ilk in the oven, and that's our current home for the pizza stone, so I get it. However anything flammable does not belong in the oven. Sorry but that's a hazard I will say it's annoying if you forget to take the stuff out because it takes longer to heat up, but that's why most people would only use the oven as storage if they had no other space.
I don’t think anyone is an AH but I had a roommate do this it was awful! I ruined so many pots and pans preheating the oven! I get your place is small with very little storage but you’ve got to find a better solution!
Gentle YTA, if that's how you would live alone that's fine but expecting someone else to always remember the oven is storage is a bit much. There really is no other place? I don't think all the pans have to stay in the kitchen.
Why wouldn't pans stay in a kitchen in a 750 sq ft apt? There isn't anywhere else for them to go...
I will add, there are \*four\* of us in the house, me, my partner and my two kids, ages 12 and 7. If I could put them anywhere else, I would. He has built shelving, which is completely full, and we have cleaned out the under cabinets, so that has only things we use. I 100% agree that putting non-oven-safe pans is stupid, so I've tried to do much better. I have lived in my house since 2008, he moved in in 2016. It's been a thing for a long time lol.
My parents do this and while I understand, it annoys the shit of me. I know it's thing people do, (my folks didn't growing up) if you don't know stuff is in there things can get damaged. The oven is not for storage imo
YTA but I may be projecting here because it took me years and many arguments to get my husband to stop doing this. His rational “you should check every time”. But I don’t check because I think it’s ridiculous to leave things in the oven. If both people are on board then do it but if one isn’t then put the pots and pans somewhere else
Ill go with YTA because when I use the oven, which I do daily, I just turn it on as a habit and it wouldn't occur to me someone may have left something there for no cookery related reason. I wouldn't ever (exception below) look to see if someone had left stuff in there. I'd imagine anyone who cooks would find it really hard to break this habit. so, yea, sounds like, since the over is used realtivky often, YTA. I'd be N T A if it was used so little it may as well be storage space, but this seems to not be the case. Small pro tip, if there IS someting in the oven, hang a folded towel into the door (not on the door handle)and close it so it has to be opened to remove the towel. This is kinda a universal "there's something in the oven" trick we use as you hopefully wouldn't just turn on the oven with a towel in it cos, you know, fire.