Let me preface this that we are all safe and sound.
“Do you smell smoke?” Jamie my husband said to me last night as we laid in bed almost asleep. I said no, paused and said go check anyways! Quickly I started to smell it and heard him say the dryer is on fire! As my husband grabbed the fire extinguisher that was in our laundry room, I ran to my son’s door waiting to hear if it was getting worse. He said “Flames are shooting out”. Quickly he got it out with the fire extinguisher. It took a couple hours to clean up the residue for the extinguisher and there was barely any damage.
The fire just burned through a small area of our hardwoods and we had to throw away all of the sheets and duvet cover that were being dried. We realized how lucky we were – that we had not yet fallen asleep, that Jamie smelled it very early on and I had randomly bought a fire extinguisher after we moved in 4 years ago and put it in the laundry. So I figured it may be worth sharing some dryer safety tips.. as I feel like we all go through the daily motions and forget these.
Some Dryer Safety Tips:
- This saved us… Have a working fire extinguisher nearby! Go buy one today!
- Don’t use the dryer when going to bed or when you are leaving your house
- Clean lint trap before or after every load and check the back of the dryer where lint can build up
- Don’t overload the dryer
- Avoid putting anything with plastic and rubber in the dryer
- Make sure you have metal venting and the correct electrical plug & outlet
- Clean vent pipe or schedule professional for regular dryer vent cleaning
- Check your outside dryer vent
- Follow manufacturers instructions aka read the actual manual
- Follow other fire safety guidelines
Stay prepared and safe! 🙂
And disclaimer – PLEASE check out more reputable fire safety sources than us and the actual manual for a more detailed list.. these are just little reminders we came up with – we are in no way fire safety experts.
