Dryer Drama

Our dryer has been slacking in its duties of late.

Oh, it tumbles clothes around, and even warms them up, but it takes a full two cycles to REALLY dry things anymore.

This is unacceptable to me.  I do not appreciate appliance rebellion in any form, but the dryer and I have always been friends so I am prone to think maybe he doesn't feel well somehow.

So I went about trying to help him feel better.  I emptied out the lint trap (I am very particular about cleaning the screen after every load, but I took the casing apart and vacuumed out everything I could reach -- this I do every few months anyway, so no big deal).  That didn't seem to make a lot of difference so then I detached the exhaust hose and vacuumed that out which was a bit more tricky, but still manageable.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to do a lot either so then I knew it was time to call in the bigger guns.

I got together with my other good friend, the Internet, and we tried to reason out an answer and determine why my dryer wasn't fully participating in clothes drying anymore.  After learning the basics about the internal workings of a dryer, I set to work to remedy the problem my Internet pals said was most likely causing the issue.

I tore into the dryer (thank you people who know what they are doing and make videos about how to do it) and cleaned lint and dust and muck out of all the corners of the insides of the dryer.  It wasn't easy moving the fat, heavy stackable washer/dryer combo around because super-woman I am not, but with lots of grunting and shoving I got there.

There was one mishap which found the dryer top clattering into the back panel I had set aside which was holding all the screws I had removed sending them catapulting around the washroom for a fun (um, no) little game of hide-and-seek, but after searching the contents of the laundry baskets one piece piece of clothing at a time I eventually reclaimed all the escapees.

(Except for this little monster who seems pretty obvious, but actually managed to elude me longer than the rest.  Somehow he secreted himself underneath a laundry basket and stayed there snickering for some time.  Little pill.)

Anyway, as I was finishing my project by vacuuming the insides from the top down, Josh came home from work and decided to be helpful with the camera.

Yeah, helpful (sarcasm to the nth degree).  JOSHUA!!!

And now (hopefully) the dryer is feeling back to normal and will do his job without a hitch.  I'm crossing my fingers that he keeps at it for a good long time.