The Deep Pleasures of Dryer Lint

posted in: Day In The Life, Tips 47
It’s even got the peel going on at the lower righthand corner! Unbelieveable. Image: Wikipedia.

 

You know how I use Wikipedia for 99 percent of all the images used on the ol’ PG?

If you missed it, that’s the deal around here. I use Wiki images because they’re fair use on account of being in the public domain. I also use them because they’re often suuuuper weird, and therefore funny. I also like to be consistent.

The drawback of using a free-for-all like Wikipedia Images, however (and I’ve mentioned before), is that slick stock photos these ain’t. I’ll be looking for an image of something normal, like a bowl of cereal or a windmill or what have you, and all Wikipedia offers me are bizarre pictures of like, German bundt cakes or medical diagrams.

So this morning, I thought about how I wanted to write about dryer lint. And I thought about it all day. And then I sit down at this coffee shop to blog about dryer lint, but I pause. Because I think, “Aw, man! There’s not going to be any picture of dryer lint on Wikipedia.”

[I have never before wanted to use an emoticon in my blog so much as I do right now: I would use the face with the straight, horizonal line as the mouth.]

Because I go and look in Wikipedia and there are no fewer than nine pictures of different dryer lint situations. Like the one above. This is the world we live in! At least, it’s the world I live in. It’s very strange here.

Anywhoo, I keep meaning to write about dryer lint because I am compelled by it. Specifically, I am compelled to engage with dryer lint. When I do laundry in my building’s laundry room and it’s time to open the numerous dryers in the wall and put my clothes inside them, I get to take out the lint screen and pull the lint off — and I enjoy this a great deal. Especially if it’s real thick on there.

Wait, wait: I’m being very reserved. You need to know that I love pulling thick lint off a dryer screen. It’s so felty! And it just peeeeeeels off! In one … pad! And the slice o’ fuzz is so squinky, like you could just squink it between your fingers and it would be a ball. But then, when you let go, it would squanch back out. I like to scoop out the lint on all 10 dryer screens up there, even if I only need to use two or three to dry my clothes.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you feel me on this? It’s weird, maybe. But who does it hurt? No one!

If anyone else likes to scrape the lint off the lint screen, I’d like to know. If you don’t, I have one question for you — no, I have two:

  1. Do you realize what you’re missing?
  2. Did you know that, according to the experts, you really should clean your lint screen regularly to prevent … something bad? Does this make you want to try out cleaning your lint screen this very second? Go ahead. We’ll wait.

See?? And all those pictures on Wikipedia … Other people are part of this club. Now you are, too.