One of the things I liked about my house when we bought it was that there were poles in the yard so that you could hang clothes out to dry. I grew up loving the smell of sheets that had been dried in the summer sun. They smell better than any scented product could possibly smell. 

The realities hit after the first year. My husband and children have allergies and drying sheets outside only compounded their problems. Also, I don’t ever remember my Mother having problems with birds and mulberry trees. It was hard to get those terrible purple splotches out of the sheets.  The  switch was made  to indoor drying. 

My old dryer stopped working recently. I had a very slight sentimental attachment to it. It was the first appliance that we bought after we bought our house. The dryer that came with our house was ancient and we knew was inefficient but we weren’t ready to start buying appliances right away. 

When we had our first child, it was time for a newer dryer. That dryer kept going through two kids and lots of laundry. The only repair was my fault – I dropped a clothes pin down the lint trap and we had the repair man come out and retrieve it. 

Dryers should last a long time. They have few moving parts and should be the work horses in your appliance stable. Since my dryer had lasted over 20 years, I was surprised when I looked into replacing it. The prices were higher than I would have thought. 

I knew that the lifespan of appliances is not what it had been in prior times. The repair men blame it on cheap plastic parts that are now used and also the electronics that control them. 

So, before I bought my dryer, I asked the repairman what dryer he would recommend. His immediate response was to buy the simplest dryer that I could find. “Get a dryer  without an electronic touch pad.” He told me that most people do not use all the features that can be on a dryer. They just want their clothes dried. 

I went looking. I looked at ads and I looked on line. I could not find a dryer as simple as he suggested. I finally called my appliance guy. (Yes, I have an appliance guy. It is part of my management business.) He told me they did have a dryer that was as simple as I wanted and the price was much less than all the other dryers that I had found. 

I ordered the dryer. It works great. It is very simple. Apparently the old acronym “KISS” applies to dryers.

Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) was a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960

Thanks for reading.