I Stopped My Dryer From Catching On Fire And All I Got Was This Cranky Baby
I had a plan.
It was going to go smoothly. I was going to do laundry today, and then everything would be clear tomorrow for me to start working on my Spring Cleaning.
It started out okay enough. I sorted the laundry, got the whites through the washer, and even started drying them before it all fell apart. A couple minutes into the dryer, and the laundry room started to smell like something was burning. Since I hadn't started washing the next load yet, it was obviously coming from the dryer. So I turned off the dryer, and climbed over it to make sure that nothing was on fire. I didn't see any smoke or burning flames, and yet the smell persisted.
Hoping really badly that whatever was causing the smell would be easily fixed, I googled "burning smell dryer" and discovered that this is usually caused by a lint buildup (or wiring damage, which I really hoped it wasn't).
Okay. That seems fair, and lint has been gathering in several crevices of the laundry room for a while. I had planned on cleaning it all tomorrow, when I was not in the middle of doing laundry, and while my husband could watch the baby if the loud sounds of me dragging heavy appliances woke her up from her nap. A nap that was, by the way, clinging to my daughter with the most delicate of sleep threads.
However, there was nothing to be done. I needed to clean all the lint out of the dryer and from behind the dryer and under the dryer and why was there so much lint everywhere - before I could continue on with doing laundry, thus continuing on with my plan. So I went for it. Wiped down the whole dryer, pulled the dryer out of the laundry room (this involved no small amount of acrobatics on my part), realized that I forgot to bring the vacuum downstairs, went upstairs, dragged down the vacuum, and vacuumed all the lint I could find in the laundry room.
As I was vacuuming the dusty corners of the laundry room (keep in mind I also had the washer running right next to me at the same time), I had the thought that, at least from where I was crouching, this was really loud, and if my daughter happened to wake up from her nap and start crying, there was no way I was going to hear her until either the washer finished or I stopped vacuuming.
Luckily for me, a good cleaning was all the dryer needed, and Diana wasn't screaming at the top of her lungs when I turned off the vacuum. So I manhandled the dryer back into its place, and started drying that first load again. It worked great! Then about 2 seconds later Diana woke up and started fussing.
I, after all this mess, was in no mood to deal with it. It had only been an hour since she went down for her nap, and in that hour, I was no further along in my plan than I was when she went to sleep. So I opted to ignore her fussing, and proceeded to finished cleaning the dishes from this morning and swept the floor (still had to get those last lint remnants). When I finished, she had mostly quieted down, and I was hungry from all the heavy lifting I did (and the fact that it was almost lunchtime) so I decided that I would eat my lunch by myself really quick before she woke up. I started heating up my delicious leftover enchilada in the microwave, pulled it out, sat down to take the first bite...
and Diana started crying again.
It was going to go smoothly. I was going to do laundry today, and then everything would be clear tomorrow for me to start working on my Spring Cleaning.
It started out okay enough. I sorted the laundry, got the whites through the washer, and even started drying them before it all fell apart. A couple minutes into the dryer, and the laundry room started to smell like something was burning. Since I hadn't started washing the next load yet, it was obviously coming from the dryer. So I turned off the dryer, and climbed over it to make sure that nothing was on fire. I didn't see any smoke or burning flames, and yet the smell persisted.
Hoping really badly that whatever was causing the smell would be easily fixed, I googled "burning smell dryer" and discovered that this is usually caused by a lint buildup (or wiring damage, which I really hoped it wasn't).
Okay. That seems fair, and lint has been gathering in several crevices of the laundry room for a while. I had planned on cleaning it all tomorrow, when I was not in the middle of doing laundry, and while my husband could watch the baby if the loud sounds of me dragging heavy appliances woke her up from her nap. A nap that was, by the way, clinging to my daughter with the most delicate of sleep threads.
However, there was nothing to be done. I needed to clean all the lint out of the dryer and from behind the dryer and under the dryer and why was there so much lint everywhere - before I could continue on with doing laundry, thus continuing on with my plan. So I went for it. Wiped down the whole dryer, pulled the dryer out of the laundry room (this involved no small amount of acrobatics on my part), realized that I forgot to bring the vacuum downstairs, went upstairs, dragged down the vacuum, and vacuumed all the lint I could find in the laundry room.
As I was vacuuming the dusty corners of the laundry room (keep in mind I also had the washer running right next to me at the same time), I had the thought that, at least from where I was crouching, this was really loud, and if my daughter happened to wake up from her nap and start crying, there was no way I was going to hear her until either the washer finished or I stopped vacuuming.
Luckily for me, a good cleaning was all the dryer needed, and Diana wasn't screaming at the top of her lungs when I turned off the vacuum. So I manhandled the dryer back into its place, and started drying that first load again. It worked great! Then about 2 seconds later Diana woke up and started fussing.
I, after all this mess, was in no mood to deal with it. It had only been an hour since she went down for her nap, and in that hour, I was no further along in my plan than I was when she went to sleep. So I opted to ignore her fussing, and proceeded to finished cleaning the dishes from this morning and swept the floor (still had to get those last lint remnants). When I finished, she had mostly quieted down, and I was hungry from all the heavy lifting I did (and the fact that it was almost lunchtime) so I decided that I would eat my lunch by myself really quick before she woke up. I started heating up my delicious leftover enchilada in the microwave, pulled it out, sat down to take the first bite...
and Diana started crying again.
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