The Clothes Line

The other day we had a minor laundry disaster. When you have ten people in a home, it is necessary that your washer and dryer remain in good repair. Earlier this year I asked Mark to replace one of the dryer thermostats because the dryer seemed to dry hot no matter what setting you put it on. This is not a good thing if you have finer fabrics...or brand new quilt fabric you are prewashing. Mark changed out the thermostat and it seemed to have more heat settings.

On New Year's Day Bentley was doing his laundry. He had to take Lincoln and Evan's laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer and then put his laundry in the washer. All went well until Kara checked on the load in the dryer. It was not really dry and it should have been. Mark went upstairs to check it out and discovered the no one had been cleaning the lint filter for a while...or some super linty load had been done recently? There was no way air was flowing out the vent hole behind the lint filter. He determined the thermostat fuse blew to protect the dryer from overheating and starting a fire. Hooray for fuses!

Since it was New Year's Day, it wasn't easy to get a new fuse immediately, so all the clothes in the dryer had to be hung. I took out my ancient, wooden, clothes rack and we crammed the entire load of little boy clothes on it. Then we realized the washer was filled with a second load of boy clothes. We started hanging those up--there were 47 hangars filled with Bentley's jeans, shirts, and pajamas! 47!!? There was not room enough in the laundry room to hang them all, so I used the staircase. 

When we had a discussion about cleaning the lint filter after EVERY load, Bentley was surprised to learn there was a lint filter, but Jake and Viva showed some foreknowledge of it. In any case, it wasn't just one skipped cleaning that caused this problem. It's a wonder we haven't blown the fuse before. (I wonder what left that super thick layer of gray lint? Since questions like this only bother people like me, if I start asking around it will not go well. Seriously, don't you want to KNOW?) 

In a home this size with ten people, there's always something in need of fixing. The good news is with ten people, no one has to do all the repair work. We have even hired a fix-it guy a few times when nobody was willing or knowledgeable enough to do the job.