Angie’s List $59 dryer cleaning, or do it yourself for $7

I joined Angie’s List a while back after an experience with a really terrible contractor, and mostly what I’ve found is that while businesses can’t pay Angie’s List to place or remove reviews, they can quite easily pay a third party to write whatever they want at about $10-50 per review, and judging by the positive reviews of some places I have to assume they do.

Anyway, I got this special deal offer for $59 dryer cleaning, normally a $119 value, and thought to myself “I’ve bought dryers for less than that.” Here’s what’s involved in case you want to do it yourself.

Let’s say you want to be able to do this over and over again, cleaning out your lint whenever you want. Grab yourself a 25-30 inch dryer brush ($7-15 depending on what you want,) pop off the flexible duct, go to town (go outside first.)

Come back inside, brush out the lint trap and the exhaust port. If you’ve got a vacuum with a hose attachment place the hose in the dryer exhaust just to grab any floating dusts.

If you’re good you can do this in about five minutes. If you’ve got to move stuff around, probably 20. So 20 minutes of work. That’s about $180 an hour at the discount rates and you get the dryer lint buildup, which is not covered by the text of the coupon.

But let’s say you’re paranoid about the duct and want someone to look at it for seaworthiness. You can get a whole new duct for $10.98 and just chuck the old one (although you’ll still want to clean the dryer lint trap).

Clean your ducts, it’ll save you on electric costs (dirty ducts cause clothes to dry slower,) and reduce your risk of fire. I’m obviously suggesting you go the $7 for life route.