AHH... The smell of Burning Plastic

There is nothing like the smell of burning plastic. There is nothing like being woken up in the middle of the night by your husband frantically saying, "WAKE-UP!!! Something's burning." Then groggily goping through the entire house just trying to find what is burning and finding out it was a lid to a sippy cup that fell on top of the heating element in the dishwasher and is being melted into a puddle of blue and black who knows what. What a great smell. And it doesn't go away after you carefullly reach over all the other dishes to remove the hot drippy plastic from the heating element, no!! Every load of dishes that you do for the next 2 weeks will come out smelling like burnt plastic. Trust me I know. I have done the same thing twice now. Once a couple of weeks ago and again last night. That just really irks me. Not to mention that now I have 2 perfectly good sippy cups with out lids. No i'm not talking about the flimsy throw away cups. I'm talking about the sturdy ones that come with the expensive insulated cups. What is a gal to do??? I got to go, I think I smell something burning!!