The appliances in this house are old.  They still work quite well, so I'm hoping we can get at least a few more years out of them.  My brother recently posted photos of his weekend DIY project on Facebook - cleaning out his landlord's washing machine (how nice of him!).  It reminded me of a project I had pinned on Pinterest a while ago, Dryer Lint Cleaning Tips from familyhandyman.com.

So a few weekends ago, I got really curious about what was hiding in our 15(ish) year old dryer and decided to open it up.  Well, it turns out, this is kind of a two person job; you need someone to hold the top lid, front face panel, and dryer drum (depending on the make/model of your dryer).  I recruited Tom's help (he was still in his pj's, as was I!) and removed all the screws as described below.

I was honestly shocked at how much lint build-up was inside!  The front face panel was packed full of lint in between all the wires and everything.  The scary part was the amount of lint jam-packed into the dryer fan area (and even grosser to think that all of that lint belonged to the previous owners! Nasty!).




We even found a few bonus items inside the front panel - a dime and a drill bit.  Score!



I'm hoping this small cleaning project improved the lifespan of the machine and decreases the fire risk!

Has anyone else cleaned out their dryer lint lately?