As the Dryer Burns....

What happens when you are trying to save as much money as possible? 
Everything breaks!!!

So my dryer has been making this loud "clanking" sound when I would turned it on.  I did what all great wives do, I told my husband and asked him to look at it.  Since the laundry room doesn't have Xbox360 attached to it I am not sure he actually looked at it.  So once again I did what all great wives do I shut the door to the laundry room every time I ran it. :) 

That was a great plan for about 2 weeks... then Thursday night came. I had a full load of towels in the dryer and all of our clothes in the washer. Things are going great because I am getting on top of this laundry thing.  Then it happened, out of no where (not really, maybe that "clanking" sound meant something) I heard a boom, I went into the laundry room to a dryer not drying my clothes and the smell of burnt plastic.  Since I am such a great wife (again I know) I screamed for my husband to come in the laundry room to figure out what is going on because I smell something burning.  

We determined that it was the belt that needed to be replaced, it was stripped and hanging, so it was easy to make that determination.  I immediately got on the phone to call Kmart, because they own Sears now and they are closer.  My thoughts were it's not 7pm yet and I have time to get a new one and my man can just put it on and I will have dry clothes in a few.  That is not what happened. First off, Kmart never answered the phone. I was on hold for about 10 min so I gave up and called Sears.  They informed me that they don't carry those parts (roll eyes here).  They told me that they could mail me the part and it would take a week or I could pay an extra $20 for speedy delivery and get it by Monday.  I told them that it would be fine to wait a week (I needed to save that $20).
When I got off the phone my son (6yr) came in the room wearing 4 baseball hats, his bike helmet, and his jacket.  Apparently he didn't think of clothes because he was in his undies (he was ready for bed).  He also grabbed his small backpack and started filling it.  He told me that if we have a fire he is ready to GET OUT of this house.  

I guess when I was screaming for my husband about the burnt smell he took that information and made a plan.  He even went into his sister room and started packing for her too.   That night he slept in his jammies (he took what I said seriously) and his jacket so he could easily get out!

I didn't really know what to do about all the wet clothes, I hung up all of our clothes and towels.  I don't suggest that but if you have no dryer I guess it works. My poor clothes didn't smell Downy fresh for the first time since I started couponing (I love almost free Downy).  

On Monday, I was shocked to see a package at my front door step. Could it be?  It was... it was my beloved dryer belt. I am really glad that I didn't pay the extra $20 for speedy shipping.  

I looked up on Youtube to figure out how to change the belt. It looks simple!  Until he got the door off the front of the dryer and we see it.  Probably the reason I was hearing the "clanking" sound and definitely the reason I smelled burnt plastic.  It is hard to see in this picture but it is suppose to be a beautiful round plastic piece that spins my dryer belt.  Not the burnt to a crisp dryer pullie thingy (yes that is a technical term) that you see here.  On the left is what it is suppose to look like. WOW I am glad that my son didn't need to use his plan and our house didn't burn down. 


Now, I have yet another part to replace! This time I called a store in town and they have the dryer pullie system and it would be about $20 (once again, glad I saved that $20 from the speedy delivery).  Once we got that it was really easy.  Well of course it was easy for me... my husband did all the work.
Now a week later, I have a great working 10 year old dryer that only cost us about $50 to fix.  That beats purchasing a new one!! Which is what would have happened if we couldn't fix this one. I HATE the feel of hung dry clothes and towels.