RANDOMONDAY 8

Today will be a day of righting all the rooms, running the vacuum and the Swiffers and will be accompanied by the scents of Windex and PineSol Orange and Old English---an arsenal of good friends over the years, whose odors are as familiar and comforting as the smell of old books and baby-necks.

And with my first cup, I took a little meander over to Mrs. G.’s nice accommodations, and at first believed that she was about to impart a nice homemaking tip that I’ve used for several years. The hilarious story had nothing to do with homemaking---but it left me with a giggle and still wiping my eyes from laughter.

And that inspired my own thought-for-the-day, which is not funny, nor is it really interesting, I suppose, but I’ve shared it with the folks in my family, and more than one of them have mentioned sharing it around at work or meetings or coffee dates. Plebeian though it is, it’s come to be a habit, and it makes me feel that my home is cleaner and safer---and those are devoutly to be wished---yes?

I’m right now recalling the dear friend, a small-town electrician, who was called to repair the fairly-new dryer of a family who had never had one before. It just wasn’t “runnin’ right” and wasn’t drying “like it used to,” although it was only a few months in use. He opened the lint trap, took out the screen with its multi-colored burden of so much lint he swore he thought he’d removed a raccoon, and heard several gasps from the bystanders, “WHAT’S THAAAAT???!” being the principal reaction.

OKAY---Heloise is smiling down. Take the lint trap out of your dryer and take it to the kitchen sink (or laundry sink, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those) --- (after dumping it of its fluffy burden, of course). Hold it curve-side-down beneath the faucet and run water through it, all up and down the screen.

See how the water has a hard time flowing through? It’s all that time of mixing softeners and dryer-sheet-wax with the heat, making a sort of transparent cover for each little square, and that does not make for a happy dryer.

Now. Take a little brush (mine’s the ever-present handy little nailbrush that lives on the sink, along with the pump-bottle of Apple Dawn, the scrubby-sponge and the dish-brush) and squirt a little dish detergent onto the screen. Scrub it gently all along the screen, with the grain, both ways, length and width.

Now, run some hot water through---it’s like you’ve opened the floodgates, and that’s how much more air-flow and drying power and less-time-and-electricity will be used for your laundry. Give the trap a good rinse with the sprayer faucet, and then give it a little tap against the sink to knock out the water---you’re good to go.

If you’ve gotten this far, go try it. Your dryer will thank you, and I’ll be appearing next at the Most-Boring-Blog-Post Awards next year. I hope it's in Vegas---I LOVE neon.