Little Problems can Grow

Two years ago we moved into a new house. It’s twice the size of our old house, but the laundry room is a bit smaller. Don’t get me started on it. The original house plan of the bigger house had the laundry machines in a closet. A closet! A six bedroom house and they thought all the laundry needs could be covered in a closet barely large enough to fit a washer and dryer. Ha. We had to wall off part of hallway and put in a door in order to at least get a little room to hold laundry baskets and the cats’ litter box.

About six months ago I started noticing that the laundry room was really dusty. There was dust on the back wall. There was a wire shelf over the machines and everything on the shelf was covered in dust as well. Now, if there is one chore in the world that I truly, deeply hate, it’s dusting. Don’t ask me why. I’d rather clean a toilet than dust a shelf. So, not wanting to deal with the problem, I just ignored it.

Oddly enough, it didn’t go away.

(I’m still waiting for the day that I ignore a problem hoping it fixes itself—and it does!)

I assumed that since the laundry room was smaller than our old one, it would naturally get more dusty. Also, we used to keep the door open to our old laundry room for the cats, but we put a cat door in our new one, so the door can stay shut and the dog can’t eat all the cat food. That had to be the reason for the excess dust.

Months went by. I’d run a load through and think, “Man, it’s dusty in here.” Since I have about 3 loads of laundry to do a day, that’s a lot of thinking about dust and not doing anything about it.

My plan of ignoring the problem was going great until my husband noticed the dust. He mentioned it to me, and I promised I would clean the laundry room. I know. I’m an amazing wife.

I took a Swiffer duster into the laundry room, prepared to do battle with the forces of entropy and noticed something right away. The lint hose to the back of the dryer was not attached to the dryer.

Huh.

So, for however many months this had been going on, the dryer had been shooting lint into the laundry room. Three loads a day worth of lint.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to clean accumulated lint off the walls and tiles of a laundry room, but it’s not easy. And the whole time I was working I was thanking God that our house had not caught fire. According to Google, dryers are responsible for 34% of all house fires.

You better believe that I check the back of the dryer each time I run a load now. That little bit of dust that I didn’t want to bother with could have turned into a massive and potentially deadly problem.

The same is true for other things in our lives. The things we don’t want to deal with or face, the little issues we hope will just go away, the relationships that we ignore, hoping they magically improve on their own, all of these things can turn into huge disasters down the road. Far better to spend the time now to face and fix the problem than to spend 2 hours scrubbing a tile floor while continuously sneezing.

So go check your dryer hose. It could save your life.

And no, I still haven’t dusted the stuff on the shelf yet.
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I’ll get around to it.