Sweet Dreams Are Made of This? Hardly!

I feel like I can finally breathe. Mom is no longer in the hospital, and is finally doing better tonight. Praying that she will continue to heal and will be back on her feet soon.

My OCD got the best of me yesterday. I was working in the laundry room. I'd started at the door and was working my way around the room with the cleaning, organizing and purging. I'd made it to the dryer about 2/3 of the way down the opposite wall when I realized how horribly dusty it was and decided to do something about it.

We have always been diligent about cleaning out the lint filter, but it seemed like we always struggled with dust collecting behind, under, and around the dryer. In years past, it has had to do with the vent going from behind the dryer to the outside. It seemed like we could never get the thing tight enough to keep the lint inside the vent. It leaked out at every seam. I finally fixed it with a couple of large hose clamps and quite a bit of duct tape. It was such a relief!

But even though it cut down on the amount of dust in the laundry room, it never completely took care of it. So when I came to the dryer yesterday as I was cleaning the laundry room, I tried to take the dryer apart. Turns out it's not as easy as it sounds. I could undo the front panel, and that allowed me to get to the more accessible dust and lint, but I couldn't get to the rest. I tried taking the back off the dryer, but it's sealed in some way to prevent access. 

So I went back around to the front of the dryer and took a look at what might be a bit easier to get to. I saw there was quite a bit of dust around a black case. I took it apart and realized it was the case that covered the lint filter. I was in shock at the amount of dust and lint in it, considering I poke the upholstery attachment on the vacuum cleaner down in there several times a year. The lint was not only several inches deep, but it was also hard as a rock. It had definitely been accumulating for years. 

It was the stuff of nightmares! I have no idea how the thing didn't catch fire. There but for the Grace of God and all...

I took the cover off the fan, so I could clean the blades and try to vacuum up the dust, too. It's amazing that clean clothes thrown in a dryer to dry produces lint that eventually turns into what looks like dirt. Maybe more like a silt. Just dirty and gross. From looking at what I found in the dryer, a person would think that we only dried nasty, dirty clothes year after year. 

Unfortunately, I didn't get the dryer put back together just yet. I'll be doing that tomorrow. We had errands to run today, and we forgot to pick up a coil brush that is used to clean the dust off the coils under a refrigerator. We have one somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. When I do, I'll give it to Bugster, so she has one to clean under her refrigerator, and I won't have 2 floating around here. I'm hoping to get the laundry room finished up completely tomorrow. 

Once it's done, I don't think I'll need to do anything but minor dusting from time to time in the laundry room. I'll eventually go through the holiday decorations and pare them down, but I'm totally okay with leaving the rest of the room as is. 

Now, to just get it done...