There I was, all set to rant and rave about this ludicrous idea of a gas tax holiday. (Gas tax holiday? Are you kidding me?!) Then I got all fired up to write about the ridiculous notion of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, five years after the fact, after watching a bit of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" last night. But then, this morning, while doing laundry on a break between projects, I realized America faces an even greater threat: dryer lint.
While getting in a quick pre-work workout yesterday, I happened to catch a terrifying segment on "The Today Show" entitled "Five things you need to know about your home: Lou Manfredini offers advice on water heaters, toilets, filters and more." (You can read all about it by clicking here.) Among Mr. Manfredini's five pieces of advice was this tidbit about dryer cleaning:
- Dryer cleaning: .... According the U.S. Fire Administration, more than 12,000 fires occur due to dryer issues. And 70% of those can be directly attributed to non-cleaning of the units. This should be done at least twice a year by removing the hose from the rear of the dryer and using a brush and vacuum to remove any lint buildup. The hose should also be cleaned using a brush on a flexible line. On the outside, where the vent is, the brush and vacuum should be used as well. A cleaner dryer works better and costs less to run and is of course safer to run as well.
Ever since being told by the guy who cleans our ducts every few years that our dryer hose was a fire hazard (and paying him extra money to suck every speck of lint out of the system -- money well spent, IMHO), I have been borderline obsessive compulsive about cleaning the lint screen and must remember to do my breathing exercises when I open the lid to the washing machine and discover, to my horror, that a tissue (or worse, tissues) has somehow gone undetected and wreaked havoc with my nice clean clothing -- creating a five-alarm lint threat.
Faced, once again, this very morning, with that kind of potentially life-threatening situation (and the gloomy prospect of hours spent with a lint roller later on today), I just could not get up the strength to blog about the Bush Administration's short-sighted Iraq policy, or the Bush Administration's equally short-sighted energy policy -- and the majority of the American public's inability or unwillingness to grasp the true problem re energy consumption (namely, that we are a bunch of self-centered, SUV-driving, McMansion-loving fossil fuel junkies who are unwilling to acknowledge our addiction and/or do much about it, except whine about it and try to pin the blame on the Saudis and countries like India and China, which are quickly catching up to us in terms of fossil fuel consumption, even though we can't control what they do, much as we'd like to). Though I highly recommend this article on the subject by Tom Friedman of The New York Times.
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3 comments:
I completely agree about the dangers of lint. When I was in high school, I returned home one night to find fire trucks in the driveway. Yep ... it was a lint screen left unwatched (and uncleaned).
I vowed -- with God as my witness -- that lint would never get the best of me.
I guess we're cut from the same (line-free) cloth.
Oh great -- another thing to worry about. I feel like that time when I was 17 and this auto mechanic (who was attempting to fix my Gremlin -- yes, really) asked me when was the last time I had changed my oil. I said, "You're supposed to change it?"
Now, I have enough sense to clean out the lint trap between loads. It's right there up front -- hard to miss. But remove and vacuum freaking hoses? Who knew?
I am distracted from the War on Lint by the War on Spring Tree Pollen, or actually Spring Tree Pollen's War on Me. The oak tumbleweeds are everywhere although all the cars are no longer green.
We actually have a combination washer/dryer that traps the lint before the dryer drains, so there is no hose for dried lint to accumulate. However, I do remember cleaning out one of thise things before after many years of neglect, and being shocked by the amount of linty goodness.
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