Top Tip Thursday: Solving the Lint Wars

A magnetic pencil holder designed to go in school lockers

Now that the store shelves are lined with school supplies, you might want to try this handy tip for eliminating mess in the laundry room. What do school supplies have to do with laundry?

What to Buy

Well, there's a category of items made for school lockers–mirrors, hooks, holders, etc.–all of which attach to the metal lockers' interiors via magnet. You want to choose one that's designed to serve as a small receptacle. (It might be labeled as a magnetic pencil holder, hairbrush holder, locker bin, locker box, or similar.)

How to Use It 

Bring one home, and attach it magnetically to a convenient spot on your dryer. Put it somewhere that you won't be bumping into it but where it's still within reach of the place you stand when you clear out the lint trap.

Note: Some appliances include plastic on their exteriors. If the magnet doesn't stick, try it somewhere else on the same machine until you find a place that's metal rather than plastic. Then it should stick fine.

Here's an example of a magnetic "locker box" that has been put on the side of a dryer, between it and a washer, near the top.

Why is it there? Because if you are housekeeping impaired, there's a good chance you're not always getting the lint from the dryer trap into the trash can.  Instead, you're allowing little wads of lint to pile up here and there on top of and around your dryer.

It's easy to see why that happens. You're changing out the laundry, part of which involves scooping the lint from the lint trap, but there never seems to be a trash can close enough at the moment, and it's too much trouble to walk over to one to drop in the wad of lint while you're still in the middle of loading and starting the dryer. So you end up tossing the lint somewhere handy to throw away once you're done. But then you forget.

My solution to this fuzzy problem?  

By putting this teeny tiny receptacle within reach, to be used only for dryer lint, you give yourself a temporary trash can for something that would otherwise end up causing mess. You do have to dump the tiny receptacle into a larger trash can now and then, but not nearly as often as you might think. And it's a whole lot easier to carry a small bin full of lint over to the trash can once in a while than it is to carry individual wads of lint over to the trash can every single time you do a load of laundry.

Are you a little nuts, Mindy?

Nope, I'm just housekeeping impaired and always thinking outside the box to find solutions for the kinds of messes that tend to repeat themselves in people's homes. If this post makes no sense to you, then you're simply not housekeeping impaired.

But if you "get it", then you're a kindred spirit for sure. If there's dryer lint in your laundry room where it shouldn't be–on top of the dryer, on the floor near the dryer, etc.–then you'll want to try this handy tip for solving the lint wars.

Hope you find this helpful! Here's a link to an inexpensive locker bin on amazon: