I just washed and dried a load of laundry. And, as always, I removed a handful of lint from the filter screen in the dryer after I was finished. And it makes me wonder, what the heck is dryer lint, anyway?
Is dryer lint composed of tiny bits of thread that come off the clothes? Then how is it I have any fabric left in my clothes? Because if it were possible to stitch it back together, at this point I could have made a closet full of new clothes from all the lint I’ve scraped off the filter. Yet, my clothes seem to weigh as much now as they did when I bought them. The lint must be coming from somewhere else.
Is dryer lint some kind of dirt or dust that collects on clothes and comes out in the wash? Then it should get flushed down the drain with the wash water. No, the lint has to be generated in the drying process. And why is it always the exact same color? Regardless of the colors in the clothes, the dryer lint looks the same.
Suppose I hung my clothes on a clothesline and let the sun dry them. Would there be lint in the clothes? If not, why not? Where did it go?
This is a subject that is crying out for more study. I’m thinking of applying for a U.S. government grant to do research into dryer lint. I’m thinking it may be a completely renewable resource. As long as we have clothes to wash and dryers to dry them in, we’ll be generating endless quantities of dryer lint every day. There’s got to be something useful we can do with it, and for the right amount of money I promise to give the subject the amount of thought it deserves. Furthermore – and I would bet money on this – I seriously doubt that researching dryer lint is anywhere close to being the stupidest thing the government spends money on.
| Update: a reader sent the following links: |
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