Lint From The Dryer

It was a typical morning in our house with the activities starting early from waking the barely wakeable to walking the four dogs. The dogs can barely contain their excitement from the time they first hear our feet hit the floor as we get our of bed to when the vibration of our feet on the stairs as we approach their eager faces that seem to say "take me first, take me". Then, there was the unexpected knock on the door and our friend, who was running by, telling us with concern in her voice that there was smoke coming from our roof. When one has had a major fire as we had 13 years ago, you do not take these sightings or any smell of smoke lightly. First, a quick check of the house with one of us inspecting the entire basement (no smell of smoke there) and one of us inspecting the upstairs (no fire, but a slight smell of something (was it our imagination) from the dryer. Then, it was a quick trot up the hill from where I could see the roof and the culprit was evident immediately - the "smoke" was coming from the dryer vent. After a rapid bounce down the hill, a scurry through the house, and a trot up the stairs, I climbed out of a bedroom window (folding my body through the half-window opening used to be easier) carefully walked up to the second roof level, stepped up and walked to the dryer vent. Relief was immediate as I smelled the "smoke" that turned out to be only water vapors meeting the air and posing as smoke.

But wait, what was that material coming out from under the hood on the vent - a touch of that blue-red sinuous soft down material called lint. So much for the lint trap that we clean on an every load basis and which I find to be an enjoyable experience since it clumps together and pulls the other fibers with it to leave an almost clean screen ready to be placed back into its protective slot from which it does its work. I pulled the small piece of visible lint and felt like the magician who puts a brightly colored silk handkerchief in his (take your pick) mouth, closed hand, pocket, and then pulls it back out, but this time, the single handkerchief doesn't stop coming - more and more connected sheets of silk. In my case, it was lint, but the result was the same as more and more lint appeared. It took a few minutes, but a significant amount of lint was removed (although, when squeezed, it was but a tiny insignificant ball) and the vent seemed clean. "Seemed" because who know what was hidden in the 10 feet of metal pipe that ran from the dryer to the vent - that was a job for a professional, but all seemed to be fine for the time being.

It was fine until I read an article the next day that described how a woman had lost her life in a house fire after she had saved her two daughters. The cause of the fire was - lint in the vent pipe.

Thought For The Day: We each have lint that builds up in our lives - the type of life lint that prevents us from fully functioning, but often without our knowing that it is having an impact. Sometimes we recognize the lint and do our regular cleaning and feel as if our screen is clean and we are refreshed. But, how much of our life lint has gotten by our screening process and already has seeped into the basic pipes of our daily living. Eventually, that escaped life lint has to be cleaned out for the failure to do so can impact us just as the dryer lint impacts the clothes drying process. At first, our life lint simple will slow our processing (as the dryer lint results in an increase in drying time), Eventually, the life lint will create such a significant blockage that it will cause a burn-out of the over worked life or will result in a fire that destroys the life that we have taken our lifetime to create or destroys (or at least singes or burns the loved ones around us much like a dryer fire can destroy a home or cause the loss of loved ones and loved possessions)). So perhaps the lesson is that we need to clean our life lint screen on a regular basis (daily as we do our life loads). clean the vents for the visible life lint that seems to show itself over time, and, occasionally to let someone else assist us in cleaning out the life lint that we can't seem to reach ourselves - all so that we can keep our life pipes as clean as possible and our life (dryer) functioning at the highest and safest levels.