Old Dryer

I moved into my apartment in 2010 and when I arrived, the master tenant gave me a thorough tour of the place. When we got to the laundry room, she explained that she’d bought the washer and dryer in 1985. They were small and ‘portable,’ and the dryer was the low voltage kind that you just plug into a regular outlet so it was kind of just a big, square, lukewarm hair dryer.

And, she explained, there wasn’t a lint trap. Instead, the hose from the back that would normally pump air outside through a vent in the wall was curled up to the top of the dryer and attached to a small caged plastic bucket to “catch” the lint in a puddle of water (aka lint jail). It was exactly as ineffective as it sounds, and—without ventilation—turned the whole space into a steam room. There was mold on the walls, lint everywhere, and it took three to five hours to dry a single load. But hey! It was free, in-unit laundry, and I know when to be grateful for what.

A couple years later, she moved out and I inherited the lease (and the dryer). In a moment of clarity while filling up the lint-catching bucket with lint-water I thought, “What am I doing with this weird hose-bucket thing. I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s insane, and I just don’t see how Kenmore would make a dryer without a lint trap.” So I knelt down and ran my hands along the inside of the dryer, and oh my god, I FOUND IT. It was a kidney-shaped thing with holes in the back that I’d always thought was where the “hot” air came from. I pulled it out and slowly unearthed a dense, spectacular, decades-old brick of lint. It actually took my breath away. It was revolting and incredible; like a sedimentary rock of laundry’s past!

Isn’t it INSANE? I kept it in a shoebox on a shelf in the laundry room for three years until my roommate was cleaning one day and told me, “Take whatever pictures and do whatever lint brick perv things you need to do—this goes in the garbage today.”

The dryer works so much better now.