I do a lot of laundry at my house. LOTS. Enough for me to say to my husband, “I’m glad we’re alive during this age when technology is so abundant. I can’t imagine doing laundry for you without electricity.”
So when our “new to us” dryer started skimping out on me I started to panic. Back in Maryland we had a dryer that worked (by work I mean hummed and rotated its basket) but didn’t heat up the air. $100 later the electrician replaced a TINY little fuse that burned out. Yes. $100. I was peeved.
[the_ad id=”23560″]Well I’ve been experiencing this lately with this “new to me” dryer and I don’t want to fork over $100 to fix it when I could use it toward a multitude of other projects.
Somehow I stumbled upon this link online. It contains 17 Tips to Make Your Life Easier. #17 in particular caught my attention. It involved cleaning the lint filter.
What I learned from that blog post:
Dryer sheets create a film over lint filter’s mesh over time. That’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film , but it’s there. This phenomenon also causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! The electrician said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to cut energy bills) is to take that filter out, wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least EVERY six months. This extends the life of the dryer at least twice!”
Good advice, huh?
So I did it. I took out the lint filter and brought it with me to the bathtub:
I can’t see a film, but why is that water just sitting there? Isn’t that what the mesh is for?
[the_ad id=”23655″]I took some Dawn liquid detergent and my toothbrush from my oil stain removal experiment, and as that experiment went through the rinse cycle, I washed this.
A quick (30 second) brush through…and look at the water run now:
Wow.
I replaced the lint filter into the dryer and put in the next load into the dryer. What normally wasn’t dry until a second run-through (towels) in the dryer was piping HOT even before the cycle finished:
Yes…there were still a good 20 minutes left before it finished its cycle and the clothes were dry.
TRY THIS and see for yourself! You could be saving tons on your energy bill!