You load your dishwasher properly, but we all can’t account for what happens once you hit ‘Start.’ So, you let your dishwasher run its cycle and after it’s complete, you open your dishwasher door only to be blown back by a powerful burning smell. The recommended top shelf placement for plastic cooking utensils is correct, but sometimes items shift (just like they warn you about with the overhead bins on airplanes). This time, it did. Your plastic spatula made it all the way through the top rack and then the bottom, landing on your heating element at the bottom of the dishwasher. That may have been okay, but the exception here is that a plastic spatula and a heating element obviously don’t agree with each other. So you see that it’s completely melted to your element like the above picture.

Now What Do You Do?

For a case like this, try and get the spatula off of the element without misshaping or breaking the element. Also be sure that you’re not damaging the element clips that keep the dishwasher element in place. Still not budging? Try placing an ice pack on the melted area. This will harden the area and will help it crack off just a bit easier. Once the utensil has been freed, you can use a plastic paint scraper to scrape off any excess residue.

What To Do To Get the Rest of the Residue Off!

If you have any acetone laying around the house, or even nail polish remover, put some on a rag and try to wipe the remaining residue off of the element. Once you’ve got the bulk of the residue off, you will most certainly want to run a few empty cycles to let your dishwasher finish melting off what you were unable to get. Please be advised: This will still have a bad odor. Let it stink for a couple days, but once all residue is off, you will start to notice the smell vanishing. It’s as simple as that!