Holiday season is potluck season. Which means there's going to be more than enough opportunities to leave your oven powered on as you run out the door, late, with your serves-8-to-10 dish in hand. And you want to know what's even worse? Leaving the oven safely off, but thinking that it's on as you're making a sudden u-turn just about 5 minutes away from home.
Instead of racking your brain with "Did I?" thoughts the whole way down your street, adapt this little memory-jogging tip into your cooking routine: Use the rubber band method.
To get started, just grab a few colorful rubberbands from the office (or some dusty Livestrong bracelets, or borrow one of your kids' packs of silly bandz) and wrap one around each oven knob.
Then the next time you go to cook and turn on your stove or oven knobs, slide the rubber band off first and wear it around your wrist. When you're done and you've turned the oven off safely, wrap the 'band back around the knob.
Once you get into the habit of using this memory jogger, you'll always have a take-with-you visual reminder that, yep, you really left the oven on. You'll never have to make a trip back home in vain again.
(Images Flickr user druid labs under license from Creative Commons, Flickr user Jez Page under license from Creative Commons)
The Ultimate Used Furniture Cleaning Kit
Ana Creates a Community at Home
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Z2 iPod Dock and Wi...
Soda Recipe: Homemade Ginger Ale
Recipe: Spring Fruit and Nut Tabouli
i do this to remember to turn the gas off on my grill! when i turn it off, i leave the rubber band around the gas valve for next time.
Genius!
Gah...now I'm paranoid I left the stove on!
:P
I'm crazy OCD on this. I go to turn my oven/stove top off like 5 times after using it because i always panic that it could still be on.
@applebomb - I may be worse. I find myself checking and re-checking the stove, including repeatedly putting my hands on the burners, to make sure the stove is off. It's a routine that takes me at least 10-15 mins before I leave the house every morning for work. My partner thinks my OCD is sufficiently bad as to warrant my getting some type of medical treatment for it. I can't imagine how this can be treated, though.
My method is, put a wire hook on the oven door handle and hang my car keys on it. If I start to leave the house and my keys are not in their normal place, I go to the oven door and remember that it is on.
I've never understood the OCD oven thing. I think it must be something that people pick up in early childhood or something. I'm OCD about other things, but not that. What I don't understand is what the problem is with leaving the oven on? I've come up with something which might be a way to combat the issue by using reverse psychology: leave the oven on 500 degrees and go out for dinner and a movie and come home and realize, hey, it might be a bit warmer in your place than usual, but other than that, EVERYTHING IS FINE. Ovens are meant to be left on for long periods of time. They're sealed. I've baked hundreds of cookies and left an oven on for several hours at a time, and nothing bad happened, other than I gained about five pounds from eating cookie dough. It's irrational to think something might happen while you're away. It seems like a control issue to me. Even with your range, unless you actually leave an empty pot on the burner or have a crazy house pet that likes to jump on the stove, you could probably leave all your burners on high for several hours while away and come home to find EVERYTHING IS FINE. Stop driving yourselves crazy.
I love both the idea of the rubber bands and the reassurance that even if I do leave the oven on, EVERYTHING IS FINE.
Maybe I need to use the rubber band trick on the flat iron, which is more likely to burn the house down.
I've never understood the OCD oven thing because I think it would be hard to accidentally leave the oven on. Unless you forget that you were even baking something in the first place, wouldn't the act of pulling the baked item out of the oven trigger a reminder to turn it off? Sometimes I'll even turn off the oven a few minutes early to save some energy, since there's enough residual heat to finish the job.
@engineergirl & @chellspecker & @suzzannakins.....yeah, but....
I have a range that has electronic ignitors on the burners and in the oven. Don't have a problem leaving the oven on, I've left the house (albeit briefly) with it running. It's contained, and I figure it's safe,
But....I have gotten into the admittedly bad habit of leaving things on top of the stove because in the back of my mind I *know* there's no pilot lights, hence no flame, hence no danger. Sometime's I'll pile newspapers for recycling, towels for the laundry, grocery bags to go back to the car on the top of the range, since it's right by the kitchen door on the way to the backyard/garage.
I've left a burner on a couple of times, and have absolutely had a breakdown when I've come back to the kitchen in the morning or when I got home from work, and realized what I'd done.
Not so much about the potential damage to the house, but the fact I have 2 dogs that are inside when I'm gone. The thought I could've hurt (or killed....) them was more than I could handle. I can't imagine what I'd feel if the dogs were kids.
So, yeah, I'm REAL OCD about the burners on the top. REAL. Like check them 3 or 4 times after I'm done cooking.