Imagine renting an apartment where you share the washer and dryer with the other people living in that building. If you noticed that the lint filter in the dryer needed to be cleaned out, would you clean it or leave it?

In this story, one renter is in this situation and decides to clean the lint filter. The landlady’s response when she saw what was happening was quite unexpected!

Keep reading for all the details.

Super Duper Dryer Fire

I rented a basement apartment long ago and, as I was taught growing up, went to empty the lint after I finished doing my laundry in the laundry room I shared with the landlord family upstairs.

I had THE DAMNDEST time getting the lint trap out.

I finally get it out and the entire space is JAM PACKED with lint.

I cleaned it all out and put the trap back. The dryer now took half the time to dry as it had before.

The landlady clearly doesn’t understand best practices with a dryer.

So a couple of weeks later, Im finishing up and emptying the trap and the landlady comes in and is HORRIFIED that I “took the filter out!”

“This dryer is pretty new and that filter keeps the lint from getting in the motor and destroying the machine (half right). NEVER take that out again!”

Mkay. After that, I left it to build up – not my electricity when it took forever to dry, not MY house in danger of burning down.

The inevitable happened.

So I moved out shortly after that (there was ALOT of general stupidity from the family upstairs that I didnt put up with after the second month) but only moved a few streets over.

Months later, on a cold a rainy fall afternoon, HUGE SURPRISE! Sirens and fire trucks and flashing lights racing down the street to their house.

Their dryer caught fire.

Im sure the landlady blames me though for “breaking” her dryer instead of the tons of lint she let build up inside and eventually catch fire. But I did as told and never took the lint filter out again.

I can’t imagine never cleaning out a lint filter and thinking it’s a bad idea to clean out the link filter. That landlady sounds crazy!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Keep the lint!

There’s a big difference!

This person is reminded of a story.

It’s important to understand consequences.

The landlady might still make the same mistake.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.