Household advice to Reid - Works for me Wednesday

Just in case I forget to tell Reid this when she is older, I wanted to get these tips in writing:

1. If your clothes dryer isn’t drying your clothes like it should and the top of the dryer is getting hot, before you call the appliance repair shop, disconnect the vent. When you run the dryer with the vent disconnected and the dryer doesn’t get hot, the problem is with the vent and not with the dryer. This will save you the cost of the diagnosis visit. Appliance repair people don’t fix vents. It also helps if you know where the dryer vents to the outside. Even though they don’t fix vents, the repair people will ask you and you’ll feel silly if you don’t know. I did, anyway. Maybe by the time you’re grown, clothes won’t need to be put into dryers but you’ll know this quaint bit of trivia.
2. If your dryer vent is blocked, it’s not a good idea to disconnect the dryer and use it anyway. The lint might aggravate allergies and the moisture could cause the paint to peel. Of course, I’m not the one that suggested you would do this in the first place. Your dryer repair person will write that you shouldn’t use the dryer until the vent is fixed on your bill so that you can’t sue him/her later.
3. When you get your heating ducts cleaned, ask to have your dryer vent done at the same time, even if your dryer isn’t having any problems. The duct cleaning people will try and charge you for full duct cleaning as well since the set up of the equipment is pretty much the same either way.
4. If you have to assemble a basic metal bed frame, it’s best to prop the box spring against the wall and assemble the frame around it. It’s easier to get the supports that go under the box springs set to the right width - bed sizes aren’t as standard as you might imagine. Watch out that you don’t tear the under fabric with a part of the frame, though. Not that I did but I do have this friend …
5. While we’re on the topic of household advice, never call a repair person until you’ve checked to be sure that all cords are connected to the appropriate places and that the power is on. Turning something off for 60 seconds and then restarting it is another thing to try. No, really, it seems obvious but you’ll save the time / money of a service call.

Guess who was visited by a dryer repair person and bed delivery people recently ;+)

What advice would you add?

This entry was posted on January 30, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Works for ME. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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