The many uses for dryer lint. Who knew?
There’s nothing more useless than dryer lint right? It’s important to get rid of the stuff whenever you’re done washing, but what do you do with it?
Buzz60
As we barrel toward Christmas, I was reminded just now of an item on my wish list.
The reminder came with the howling, grinding sound of motor bearings dying inside my wet-dry shop vacuum. It’s a sound that induces the same spine-rattling response most of us get when someone rakes their fingernails across a chalkboard.
I heard it a week ago when I was cleaning fall leaves, small pebbles and assorted wrappers from the car carpet. And I promptly forgot about the awful noise.
I heard it again just now as Daughter No. 3, home for a Thanksgiving visit, cleaned up after clawing a small sheep’s worth of fluffy, wool-like lint from below the trap in our dryer.
I was horrified! Not only was my vacuum an ear-piercing embarrassment, but my dryer was packed with lint in a place I clearly had never cleaned and didn’t know to clean.
I’ve written in the past about the importance of cleaning lint from dryer vent pipes. If they get clogged, at least a couple of things could happen: The dryer’s efficiency could be reduced, and in the worst case, the dryer could overheat and start a fire.
Pro tip: In addition to cleaning the lint trap after every use and cleaning the pipes annually, never leave home while the dryer is running.
Today I learned that cleaning the pipes is not enough. It’s important to look inside the dryer itself on occasion — and at least pay attention to how the dryer is behaving. In this case, our daughter was inspired to remove a plastic grate between the dryer drum and the lint trap because the lint trap was not seating properly in its housing.
It was hitting something that wouldn’t allow it to fall fully into its proper place — a pile of lint!
I’m embarrassed to acknowledge that I had a vague sense that something wasn’t quite right, but I shrugged it off, thinking that maybe it always fit that way and my memory was to blame.
Thank goodness our daughter was curious enough to grab a screwdriver and remove six screws and take off the grate, because what she found next was truly horrifying — a wad of gritty lint, shredded tissue strips and bits of hardened gum or old caulk or other once-sticky substance that made its way through the wash in my pockets and into the dryer.
All I could think about was how easily that stuff could have caught fire if it had made its way near a heating element.
The dryer is back together now, and both it and I are breathing easier.
So I’m back to dreaming about other items for my Christmas list, which are generally very practical in the Miller house. Among them are a fix for our garbage disposal — or a new disposal — which suddenly quit working right after Thanksgiving and only a year or so after I bought it.
I’m in the process of diagnosing that problem now. It’s not jammed with turkey bones, or anything else. The grinding wheel moves freely, but the disposal isn’t getting power for some reason.
The breaker is on and never tripped, but the little red “reset” button on the bottom of the disposal is limp and unresponsive when I push it, so that’s one suspect right now.
Another possibility is the electrical switch we use to turn the disposal on and off. I used a tester to see whether the disposal is getting power, and it is not. I scoffed when a YouTube video about disposal repairs suggested the switch might have failed, but now I’m thinking it is a possibility.
We’ll find out soon, and one way or another, my bride will have a working disposal within a few days, if not sooner.
Next, there’s the matter of a constantly running toilet at the home of Daughter No. 1.
I’m beginning to think that what I really need for Christmas is a plumber.
Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.
@youroldhouse
