Avoiding an emergency altogether? Priceless.

Well, this is perhaps one of those experiences with a lesson whose moral everyone else already knows, but bear with me--if you didn't know, you might spare yourself an emergency...

When we had owned our clothes dryer for what felt like a relatively short time, it got less and less effective at doing its intended job--we had to run clothes through more than one cycle in order to dry them, though eventually they did get dry. Not a good scenario energy-wise, or energy bill-wise, or even patience-wise. So we finally bit the bullet and called in a repairman to find out what the problem was.

Turns out we had a burned-out element which needed replacing, but from what I understand, that was not the only factor contributing to the problem. I know about the lint screen that you are supposed to clean out after every load. What I didn't know was that about every year or so you are supposed to clean out the entire hose that is connected to the dryer, because the lint filter, helpful as it is, doesn't catch all the lint that decides to separate itself from your fabrics. In fact, the repairman informed us that not only was build-up of lint in the dryer hose contributing to the slowdown of the drying process, but such build-up can cause a fire. I'd call that an emergency. It may not be a likely emergency, but I doubt that anyone will stand in the laundry room discussing statistical probability while it happens to them. My husband now cleans out the dryer hose every year or so now--and it feels good to know that we are making our home a safer place to be. Hopefully this is a case where it will always be an emergency averted. Have you checked your dryer hose lately? You know what they say about prevention...

Dryer lint, you may ask? You may think that I am stretching for blog subjects, (which may sometimes be the case) but one of the things that led to the story about dryer lint was this post, found over at Survival Lady's website. (Thanks, Survival Lady!) Talk about a cool fire-starting kit, and one of the main components is.... (drum-roll please)...dryer lint! I have yet to put one of these together, but I have purchased a tin in which to place the components. Soooo....if you are into statistical analysis and figure the probability of a fire is not enough to clean out that dryer hose, maybe you'll do it for the sake of a few good fire-starting kits...