On the short list of what is important, dryer balls come in dead last. That doesn’t explain why we have ten of them rolling around in our dryer and taking up more space than our clothes.
For those of you out of sync with advanced dryer technology, dryer balls are spiked plastic spheroids one puts in the dryer to keep everything fluffed up as your clothes are spinning out of control. The packaging claims they also distribute heat better and keep clothes from clumping, and therefore dry a load of laundry faster. I’ve never seen any warnings as to the number of DB’s one could use, so we keep adding a couple every week and now have a tall pile. (Naturally, drying a load of clothes at our house is very similar to being in a bowling alley, apart from the shoe rental and complicated scoreboard).
I began thinking that the more dryer balls I added to the mix, the faster our clothes would dry. My strategy was to insert so many in the dryer that the mere sight of them would scare all the heat and moisture out of my clothes and I wouldn’t have to turn the dryer on at all. Thereafter, I could get rid of the dryer altogether and simply scatter dryer balls around the house to take care of any of my drying needs. But first, I had to make sure all the dryer balls were in good working order, and more importantly, that they were working at all.
That is easier said than done. Quite honestly, I have no earthy idea what is happening inside our dryer after I push the start button. Given the state of our country, I have my suspicions that most of the plastic dryer balls are not doing anything at all. That is fine for the rest of the country, but not for this house. Here, even a dryer ball must have good moral fortitude, be of strong character and possess a sincere work ethic. Like we say here, “When the going gets clumpy, the clumps get going!” It was time to see which dryer balls were pulling their weight, and which ones were the slackers.
As I put my ear to the rotating drum, a question came to mind…Were there dryer balls I should retire and send to quietly tumble out their days at the local laundromat? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to make any airhead decisions. Finding help these days, particularly good help, is difficult with signs posted outside businesses practically begging for anyone to put in a couple of hours. I knew if I fired a dryer ball for no reason, all my dryer balls might boycott me with loud signs that say, “REVOLUTION STARTS AT HOME!” Or “TURN UP THE HEAT, PUT BALLS BACK IN THE DRYER SEAT!”
As it turns out, I didn’t have to work very hard. I found several slackers hiding in t-shirt sleeves, and a couple more wrapped up in a wad of well-done bedsheets. Well, there you go, I told myself. Those sneaky fellows hadn’t been fluffing and spinning at all, but just going along for the ride. My suspicions were further raised when I noticed that a few more of them had gained a few pounds. Not a big deal you say, but it was enough that their shape had changed from round to ovaloid, a change that was unsettling in the circular atmosphere of a dryer drum. I knew they couldn’t possibly be circulating evenly, and most probably were taking a few breaks in the cycle when they thought they could get away with it.
Finally, I had to eliminate a couple more due to their co-dependency, a condition common when a dryer ball gets so enmeshed with the clothes that it is more interested in controlling others than taking care of its own wrinkles. Clingy and full of static, they often fall out of the dryer when the clothes come out and bounce off to pout in the corner.
There is some good news here, though. Over the course of my evaluation, I’m proud to say I’ve whittled my dryer ball team down to five hard working, stalwart examples.
And just in time! I was beginning to worry I might have to rely on the actual dryer.