It's A Learning Process

So, I decided that since I've shared an embarrassing story about my husband, you all deserve an embarrassing story from me.

I would like to preface this story.

My mother did a wonderful job preparing me for the duties of a house wife.  Mom had me cleaning the bathrooms and dusting when I was in middle school.  She also had me help her with spring cleaning & and preparing the house for company.  I knew how to clean a house from top to bottom by the time I was out of middle school.

When I entered high school, Mom decided I needed to learn how to cook.  In the summer, she would have me plan one meal a week and make a grocery list of the things I needed.  For the most part, I enjoyed cooking & learned a lot in the process.  I wasn't afraid to tackle a new recipe by the time I was out of high school.

Another job Mom had me do in the summer, on occasion, was laundry.  She taught me to separate my darks from my whites, check pockets for "treasures," read tags for special laundering instructions, inspect everything for stains, when to use hot water vs. cold water & regularly check the lint trap inside in the dryer.  For the most part, Mom did the laundry; but every once in a while, she'd ask me to throw a few loads in for her.  Thankfully, detergent had instructions on how much goes into the washer for different size loads, so I didn't mess that up.  Mom didn't like to dry everything in the dryer, so she often used her clothes line.  It wasn't my favorite thing to do, but I also learned how to hang laundry in the appropriate order on a clothes line.

All in all, when I got married I felt fairly competent in running a house.  Don't get me wrong, I still had to call Mom up about every other day with questions about this or that.

So anyways, on to my embarrassing story...

We didn't have a clothes line in our back yard like Mom.  So, after talking to my mother-in-law one day, I discovered that it was ok to dry everything in the dryer.  This was a new and exciting concept for me.  How easy & fast was that?!  Instead of spending 10 minutes hanging every load of laundry out on the clothes line, I could just throw it all into the dryer & 40 minutes later it was ready to be folded and put away.  This, I liked!

Load after load got thrown into my dryer.  Weeks, then month went by.  I started noticing that my laundry wasn't drying as fast as it used to.  I'd have to run two cycles to get everything dry.  I also started to notice a burning smell when I used my dryer.  A few times, it smelled hot enough to start a fire.  My first thought was oh brother, we thought we were getting such a great deal on this dryer on craigslist but there must be something terribly wrong with it.  It hasn't even been a year & it smells like something's broke!  

Christmas was just around the corner & I mentioned to my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws that I was having dryer problems.  Janelle & Jenna both informed me that they had drying racks that they used sometimes.  I decided to ask for one for Christmas since I didn't know if my dryer was going to hold out on me.

I started using my drying rack immediately after Christmas.  I'd throw my laundry in the dryer for about 5-10 minutes just to get some of the moisture out of them & then I'd hang everything on the drying rack.  I noticed the hot smell just kept getting worse...even when I'd only throw my laundry in for 5 minutes.

I finally mentioned something to Ryan about it.  He said he'd have his dad come over & take a look sometime.  I remember telling Ryan how frustrated I was because the dryer was only slightly used when we got it and I only used it for a year.  Now I was afraid I was going to burn down the house any time I turned it on.

Finally, one Saturday in February Keith came over to take a look at our worthless dryer.  He pulled it out from the wall, looked things over for a while & then turned to me and asked, "When was the last time you cleaned out the lint trap?"

I immediately started getting hot.

"Ah, lint trap? What lint trap?"

"This lint trap."  Keith pulled out the lint trap on the top of my dryer.  It was completely clean.

I looked at the lint trap baffled.

"That's weird, I didn't even know that was a lint trap.  My mom's dryer had a lint trap inside her dryer that we had to clean out but I assumed that since mine didn't have one inside like her's my dryer just didn't need one.  Her's is sooo old.  I figured that they probably don't make lint traps any more.  The dryer just gets rid of the lint itself."

Keith gave me kind of a weird look.  "So, you've never cleaned this out before?"

"Nope!"

Keith took a flash light and looked down the lint trap hole.

"Well it looks like there's quite a bit of lint stuck down there,"  he said.  "Let's see if we can pull it out."

He started pulling clumps of very compacted lint out of my dryer.  About an hour later we had extracted this out of my dryer.

My father-in-law said he had never seen so much lint before.  He also commented that he had never seen lint so compacted together.  It was so far down we had to use this long clamp thing to get it out.  Even with the clamp he wasn't able to get it all out and he told me I'd have to regularly pull the lint trap out to see if more would dislodge itself over time.  Weeks later I was still pulling out large clumps of lint.

Needless to say, I was mortified and quite angry with my husband who thought this was hilarious & wanted to send a picture to all our family and friends.  He told me I would think it was funny some day.  Thankfully, he was right.  It didn't happen over night, but eventually I could laugh at myself.

When I called to tell my mom this story she felt awful that she hadn't done a better job preparing me for running my own home.  All I have to say to that is, "Mom, go back and read the preface to this story.  I'd say it wasn't your fault I missed the mark on this one.  It was just my blonde roots taking a peek at the world."