Dryer Lint

Oh yea, I lead such an exciting life. This evening, I tackled the lovely job of cleaning the lint out of my dryer and the vent line. My 14-year old dryer is taking longer and longer to dry a load of clothes, and I REALLY don't want to replace it right now. So I started searching the Internet to see what I might do to improve things. Everything I read suggested taking everything apart and vacuuming out all of the lint, so I set about to do that. Let me tell you - it was pretty ugly and I'm sure fairly comical. Picture this - I've pulled the dryer out from the closet where it lives between the washer and the wall - not a whole lot of work room. I managed to squeeze in behind it, unplugged it and took a small but powerful hand vacuum back there with me, along with a folding step stool and a screwdriver. I managed to clean out a LOT of lint out of the back of the dryer and the line going into the wall, and climbed out after reconnecting everything (using the step stool), although not particularly gracefully. Then I jammed the vacuum hose down into the lint filter on the top front of the dryer and MAN it was bad. No wonder the thing hasn't been working well. Here's hoping that does the trick and it works better now. I'm off to really wash my hands - I feel really grubby!

A side note here - if you google "dryer lint" - it's amazing what you find. There are people who dream up USES for the stuff! Now, I know from back when I was a girl scout leader that it's great for fire starters - very flammable stuff. But that's ALL I ever did with it. If you think my life is bad, read some of the blogs other people have about finding uses for the stuff. Here's my suggestion - THROW IT AWAY!!

I'm SUPPOSED to be doing either Christmas decorating or sewing but didn't accomplish either. Well, I DID do a bit of fabric stash searching for some gifts I'm planning to make but that's about it. Last evening I got my beautiful lighted wreath (courtesy of brother Ron) and a small lit potted tree on my front porch, fought for quite some time to get the blasted timer to reset but I finally got it to work, and it's lovely out there. The lights come on at dusk, and will go off at 12:15. Around 11:30 last night, I was snuggled in bed and reading "Marley and Me" when my phone rang. My neighbor across the street was being helpful and letting me know I hadn't turned out my front lights. I explained the timer setup and I think she's jealous that she has to go out and plug or unplug her lights!

All of the rest of my Christmas decorations are piled all around my living room in their plastic totes, waiting to be sprung. It'll happen within the next couple of days. I enjoy Christmas decorating but it IS a lot of work.

We might get snow flurries and/or ice over night - have to get up early in the morning to allow for scraping off the car and slippery roads. Off to wash up and hit the bed.

But I have great satisfaction knowing that my dryer is relatively lint-free!