I was just down stairs doing laundry, and remembered that it’s probably time to have someone come in and clean the dust bunnies out of the dryer again.

About two years ago, I accidentally dropped a receipt down the lint trap chute while I was cleaning out the trap.  The receipt was from the Indian restaurant my husband and I had visited the day before (if you’re interested).  I’d pulled it out of a pocket before washing jeans, put it on top of the dryer, and somehow, knocked it down the chute.  (I guess this is a two for one tip, because my other tip for you is: don’t leave receipts on top of the dryer.)

My friend Michele, who is brave and smart and can pretty much fix anything, suggested that I take the back off of the dryer to see if I could find the receipt myself, but when I got back downstairs to the dryer, screw driver in hand, the warning signs about not removing the back kind of spooked me.  As did the fact that my dryer is gas powered and I had visions of causing an explosion of mythic proportion.

I called a repair man.For 50 bucks, he took everything a part, found the receipt, and cleaned what he described as an “impressive amount of lint” out of the dryer.  He also gave me a stern lecture about the fire hazards of letting lint build up in there like that.

After the cleaning, the dryer that had appeared to be on death’s door and took two cycles to dry anything, functioned like brand new, and dried full loads in less than half the time, using much less energy.

I can’t wait for the weather to get warm enough to hang most of my laundry outside again, but until it does, I want to make sure my dryer is functioning as efficiently as possible.

Photo by Tim Moore. This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License