I am very faithful about cleaning out the lint trap on dryers.  We often do laundry at the places we are working in National Parks, and laundry etiquette requires cleaning the lint trap after every use.  When I am home I do the same thing.

There are several reasons to clean the lint trap after every load.  One reason is politeness, if you are using a machine that other people also use.  A second reason is to keep your dryer running efficiently.  A third reason is the risk of fire.  According to Consumer Reports, there are almost 14,000 home fires a year caused by dryers.  My mom and dad recently had a dryer fire that was caused by a faulty electrical outlet.  Fortunately they were home at the time and caught it before the fire grew beyond the laundry room.

Of these dryer fires, 27% are caused by lint catching on fire.  Tom is careful about cleaning out the dryer vent once a year.  He also replaced the flexible accordion-style duct with a rigid duct.

Here at home we have a Samsung Moisture Sensor Dryer.  It came with the house and is a perfectly good dryer that works well.  The lint trap is located in the bottom of the door opening.  The other day I pulled out the lint trap, cleaned it, and dropped it back into place.  But the lint trap didn’t go in all the way.  I thought that was odd, so I took it out again.  I got a flashlight and looked in the opening.  There was a mound of lint at the bottom of the opening.

But how could I get it out?  I can reach my hand in part of the way, but couldn’t get to the bottom of the lint trap hole.  I got a long bread knife and used it to pry the lint out and pull it up far enough that I could reach it.  Eventually, however, I couldn’t reach any more with the knife.  I thought about taking off the plastic housing for the lint trap but would have needed to completely disassemble the front of the dryer.

So I called Tom.  He likes to solve problems like this, and he was a little disappointed I hadn’t asked for his help earlier.  Something that we had never considered – we cleaned out the lint trap and the dryer vent, but what about the area between the trap and the vent?  That was the area currently clogged with lint in our dryer.

The first tool Tom used was a wire coat hanger to dig down to the bottom of the lint trap area.  He used the coat hanger to pull it up until I could reach it and pull it out of the trap.  Then he devised a narrow, flexible hose that he attached to a vacuum cleaner to suck the rest of the lint out of the opening next to the lint trap area.  He stuck the hose in the opening as far as he could and pulled out more lint.  Eventually we reached the limit of the tools that we had.  Here is a good video of a man going through the same process with his dryer.

When we finished we were amazed at how much lint we pulled out of the dryer.  I thought I was taking good care of the dryer by emptying the lint trap every load.  But it wasn’t enough.  Doing a deep clean of the lint trap area will be something we add to our yearly (or even more often) maintenance.

Anything we can do to keep our appliances running longer is a good thing.  Regular cleaning will help prevent a fire as well as prolong the life of our dryer.