Most of the time, I feel pretty accomplished for my age. Several years back, when I was just 24, I was already living on my own, working a great full time job, supporting myself completely. I rented a nice little house, I had a dog, I managed to keep myself fed, and I could do my own laundry. I was set. Something to be proud of!
Actually I’ve always found the jokes about boys finally learning how to do their own laundry pretty funny – I grew up doing laundry as a kid, so I can’t imagine never knowing how to do it yourself. However, it’s rather amazing how possible it is to forget certain details about tasks you’ve been doing your whole life. I learned that the year my dryer stopped working. Well, it ran – but it didn’t dry my clothes. And I may have fit enough criteria to be considered a mature adult contributing to society, but I am not a mechanic by any means and have no idea how to trouble-shoot fixing an appliance. So I just went without it for a while.
This wasn’t a huge problem for me, because I don’t do laundry that often. The reason for that is my borderline obsessive addiction to clothes shopping, which would require a whole other post to delve into. The point is, I had so much clothing (including underwear!) I could go for quite a while without having to do laundry. But eventually the not being able to dry my clothes became enough of a nuisance to me that I wanted to do something about it.
I had several of my guy friends come check it out. No one could find anything out of order. One friend even climbed my roof while I was running the dryer, to see if he could feel the air blowing through the duct up there. When no one found a solution, I turned to good ol’ Dad. What are dads for, if not helping their single daughter with their domestic household problems? Still no answers. Finally, I brought my dryer woes to my Tuesday night Bible Study group. As I was relaying the story to our leader, George (he does seem to catch me at some of my worst moments, doesn’t he?) he started peppering me with questions:
Actually I’ve always found the jokes about boys finally learning how to do their own laundry pretty funny – I grew up doing laundry as a kid, so I can’t imagine never knowing how to do it yourself. However, it’s rather amazing how possible it is to forget certain details about tasks you’ve been doing your whole life. I learned that the year my dryer stopped working. Well, it ran – but it didn’t dry my clothes. And I may have fit enough criteria to be considered a mature adult contributing to society, but I am not a mechanic by any means and have no idea how to trouble-shoot fixing an appliance. So I just went without it for a while.
This wasn’t a huge problem for me, because I don’t do laundry that often. The reason for that is my borderline obsessive addiction to clothes shopping, which would require a whole other post to delve into. The point is, I had so much clothing (including underwear!) I could go for quite a while without having to do laundry. But eventually the not being able to dry my clothes became enough of a nuisance to me that I wanted to do something about it.
I had several of my guy friends come check it out. No one could find anything out of order. One friend even climbed my roof while I was running the dryer, to see if he could feel the air blowing through the duct up there. When no one found a solution, I turned to good ol’ Dad. What are dads for, if not helping their single daughter with their domestic household problems? Still no answers. Finally, I brought my dryer woes to my Tuesday night Bible Study group. As I was relaying the story to our leader, George (he does seem to catch me at some of my worst moments, doesn’t he?) he started peppering me with questions:
George: “did you check the air duct for clogs?”
Me: “yes.”
George: “what about the heating device?”
Me: “yep.”
George: “and the motor still runs?”
Me: “yes.”
George: “have you checked the lint trap?”
Me: “………………………….lint trap?”
George: *facepalm*
And that was how we discovered that even though I had been doing laundry my whole life at my parents house, for some reason I had forgotten that I needed to empty the lint trap on my own dryer. So I never had. Since I had bought the dryer. Ever.
The best moment was when I had to remind George how long I had been living there and using the dryer. When I told him it was a little over 2 years, he nearly flipped his lid. I had to hear several lectures about how I could have burned the house down (please…like I haven’t had to deal with THAT fear before).
When I got home to finally address the issue, I have to admit I was a little frightened at what would happen when I opened the lint trap. Was it so full it would all come exploding out at high rates of speed? Would I just find a burned up charcoaled wad of lint? Well, it wasn’t either of those. Actually it wasn’t even that bad. But it did take a couple tools to scrape out the ridiculous amount of lint that was packed in there.
Come to think of it, I should have saved it, it would have made a lovely sweater. If only I knew how to knit...
#2 Blonde Moment
The best moment was when I had to remind George how long I had been living there and using the dryer. When I told him it was a little over 2 years, he nearly flipped his lid. I had to hear several lectures about how I could have burned the house down (please…like I haven’t had to deal with THAT fear before).
When I got home to finally address the issue, I have to admit I was a little frightened at what would happen when I opened the lint trap. Was it so full it would all come exploding out at high rates of speed? Would I just find a burned up charcoaled wad of lint? Well, it wasn’t either of those. Actually it wasn’t even that bad. But it did take a couple tools to scrape out the ridiculous amount of lint that was packed in there.
Come to think of it, I should have saved it, it would have made a lovely sweater. If only I knew how to knit...
#2 Blonde Moment
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