Whirlpool Calypso Dryer R.I.P.

The clothes dryer died a few days ago. Actually, it has been struggling for the past year, I just kept ignoring it. Clothes have taken longer and longer to dry. Currently, it runs but without any heat. Frankly, with two kids, I find a working washer and dryer to be a necessity. We seem to have tons of laundry daily. As usual, although I would love to have depended on the husband to fix it up, he was on another business trip. So I searched the internet and found a repairman who could come over in the evening and check it out. As I waited 3-4 days for my appointment, I frantically washed as much clothing as I could and hung the clothes but still kind of fluffed them up in my heat-free dryer.

So the repairman can the other night and spent an hour dismantling the dryer only to exclaim, “Oh no!” I called out to him, “That does not sound good?” He proceeded to show me the interior of my dryer, which was filled with black lint. Apparently, we have probably had several dryer fires over the years. The thing is apparently a fire hazard and could have flamed up at any time and we are probably lucky the previous fires did not burn the house down! (And frankly as a working mom, I do run the dryer as I head up to bed at night!) So he decommissioned the dryer and now I have to go shopping for a replacement this weekend. I hate shopping. Ugh. And the really crappy thing…the dryer is only 6 years old!!!!! And it was a fancy higher-end whirlpool model! And I can’t even blame Whirlpool since it seems the people who installed the dryer used a substandard too long vent which contributed to the fires and the people who built our house installed a convoluted venting system from the laundry room to the outside.