Lint is the visible part of your clothing leaving. That is the whole thing, and once you see it that way, a lot of laundry advice starts making sense.
Every load sheds a little fabric. Where it goes, and what happens when it does not go anywhere, is worth understanding because lint is behind a dryer that stopped drying, a washer that started smelling, and clothes that wore out sooner than they should have.
Where lint comes from
Friction breaks short fibers loose from yarn. Wearing does it, washing does it, and tumbling in a dryer does it most of all. A brand new towel sheds heavily and a five year old towel barely sheds, because the loose fiber is gone. It went into the lint screen and it is not coming back.
Which is why the amount of lint a load produces tells you something. A screen packed after a single load of towels is normal. A screen packed after a load of shirts means those shirts are being abraded harder than they should be, usually by overloading, over-drying, or too much heat.
Different fabrics behave differently. Cotton, flannel, terry, and fleece shed a great deal. Synthetics shed less but the fibers they shed are finer and they build up in ducting more readily. Anything felted or napped sheds until it is worn out.
The four places lint ends up
The dryer lint screen. Catches most of it, and only while it is clean and permeable.
The dryer duct, everything the screen missed. This is the one that matters for safety.
The washer, which on most modern machines has no lint filter at all. It goes out with the drain water, and what does not goes into the pump filter or settles in the outer tub.
Your clothes, which is the visible nuisance version: dark trousers that come out of the wash covered in light fuzz.
The screen, and the film on it
Clean the screen every load. Everyone knows this and roughly half of people do it.
The part almost nobody knows: a lint screen develops an invisible film. Fabric softener and dryer sheets leave a residue that coats the mesh, and that residue restricts airflow even when the screen looks perfectly clean.
Test it. Take the screen out and run water onto it. If the water beads up or pools instead of falling straight through, the mesh is coated.
The fix is a two minute job: warm water, a little dish soap, a soft brush on both sides, rinse, and dry completely before it goes back in. Every few months.
A coated screen means longer cycles, more heat, more wear on the clothes, and more lint pushed past into the duct. It is a small thing with a compounding effect.
The duct, which is the safety item
Whatever gets past the screen lands in the duct, and lint is highly combustible. Restricted dryer ducting is a well documented cause of house fires, and the mechanism is not exotic: airflow drops, the dryer runs hotter to compensate, and there is dry fiber sitting in the hot path.
Signs the duct is restricted:
Loads taking two cycles when they used to take one. This is the main one.
The dryer or the clothes noticeably hot at the end of a cycle.
The laundry room getting humid or warm while the dryer runs.
Little or no air coming out of the exterior vent hood when the dryer is running.
Once a year, disconnect the duct at the back and vacuum both directions, and clear the exterior vent hood. If the run is long or has several elbows, or the machine is on an interior wall, a dryer vent service is worth the cost.
Reducing lint in the first place
Dry less. Over-drying is the single biggest source. Once the load is dry, everything after that is pure abrasion producing pure lint. Use the moisture sensor setting rather than a timer, and pull things out slightly damp.
Turn things inside out. The abrasion happens to whichever surface is facing out.
Sort by fabric as well as by color. Towels with towels, so the fleece and the terry are not depositing on your shirts.
Do not overload. Packed loads mean fabric grinding against fabric.
Use mesh bags for anything delicate or heavily shedding.
Line dry what you can, which produces essentially no lint at all. In the Valley, outdoor drying works most of the year, though the humidity means shade drying takes longer than people expect and anything left out overnight will be damp again by morning.
Where the equipment difference shows
Commercial dryers are vented through short, straight, properly sized ducting that is maintained on a schedule rather than when something goes wrong. That is most of why a load finishes in one cycle instead of two.
The machines at our self-service laundry on West Griffin Parkway also extract far more water in the spin, so there is less water for the dryer to remove and less time in the drum producing lint in the first place.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily, and lint screens are part of that, which means the load after yours is not running through a coated screen.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers everyday laundry when the dryer at home has started taking two cycles and you are waiting on a repair.
The short version
Lint is your clothing wearing away, so a load that produces a lot of it is a load being treated too roughly. Clean the screen every load, and wash the screen itself with soap and water every few months, because softener leaves an invisible film that restricts airflow while the screen looks clean. Whatever passes the screen collects in the duct, and a load that suddenly needs two cycles is the signal to clear it. Over-drying is the biggest cause of lint, so use the moisture sensor and pull things out slightly damp. Sort towels away from shirts, and turn things inside out.
WaveMAX Mission is at 301 W Griffin Pkwy, easy to reach from Mission and the surrounding communities. If your dryer has started needing two cycles, call us at (956) 271-4735.