There are several different ways to clean your oven. After decades of self cleaning your oven with extremely high temperatures, there are some appliance manufactures that have come up with safer ways to get your oven sparkling. Although a lot of manufactures will still provide a high temperature self cleaning mode, I would not recommend it. When you clean with extremely hot temperatures it is bad for everything. It can burn out bake elements, broil elements, control panels, glass, and it can smell very bad. Our service department is extremely busy around the holidays because many people self clean their ovens before family comes over. If you are going to self clean your oven please remember to remove your racks and any pans in the oven.
I would recommend doing a steam clean. You can put water in the bottom of some ovens and turn the temperature to 325 degrees and that will steam clean the oven. Then you just wipe it out and put the racks back in the oven. You can even leave the racks in position if you would like, because the oven will not be hot enough to discolor or damage the racks. Another good way to self clean your oven is to remove all racks and spray the interior with Easy Off. Follow the instructions on the bottle for how long you should leave the spray inside the oven then wipe the oven clean with a rag and repeat cleaning with wet rag only to wipe off any left over chemicals. Finally if you want to keep your oven clean with out much effort, just keep a cookie sheet one rack down from what you are cooking and it will catch anything that spills over. Then just put the cookie sheet in the dishwasher.