After the misunderstandings last year I decided to do an illustrated guide to cleaning out your dryer. My able-bodied assistant agreed to do all the work while I provided encouragement and photographic documentation.

First of all, let's be clear. We are not talking about cleaning out the main lint filter, which Cameron is holding here:



We're talking about cleaning out the lint that gets past this simple doohicky. It may not be much but it will build up over the years, making your dryer extremely inefficient.

Anyway, the first step involves finding the screws that hold the front on. On this model they are up underneath the lip of the door. I suspect this is pretty typical. Here Cameron unscrews them with the coveted ratchet screwdriver:



Then you remove the top from the dryer:



It's quite likely that there are internal screws holding the front off (see below, one on each side on my dryer). Take them out and remove the door switch wiring from the terminals.



As you can see here, my assistant chose an inopportune moment to blink while removing the front of the dryer. This may take a little jiggling.


Now all that's left is to vacuum out the lint.



If you do this every year, the little catch at the bottom here will be relatively empty. If you wait until your dryer takes twice as long as it did to dry your clothes you will have lots of lint, both in the trap and around the edges of the dryer - probably enough to make a nice fuzzy "lint shirt." (hand wash only)

Just do it every Super Bowl Sunday. It takes about thirty minutes.



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