Aluminum Foil Dryer Sheet

My post is late today. There’s a reason for that. In order to tell it to you, we must rewind to this morning at 6 a.m.

Husband and I were awakened by a tapping as of someone gently rapping at our windowpane. It was not a raven. But it was a bird. A persistent bird. A bird that would not give up its not-so-gentle tapping.

I was content to put a pillow over my head and sleep through it, but husband muttered something about “piece of crap stupid goddamn fucking bird,” and got up to smack at the window with a pillow. That worked for like 3 minutes.

And then husband came back with a step-stool and some sticky notes and worked up another solution. That worked for exactly 3 seconds.

Eventually we gave up. Husband left for work and I got up to start my day… and realized we had no internet.

And now we must rewind even further to the evening before, when husband tried to “fix” our issue with the failing UPS by plugging everything (including internet thingies) into a power strip.

So this morning, in my bird-induced sleep-deprived state, I went in to check on the router and all that other crap that makes the internet go and reported all lights to be turned on and flashy. But then I went back out to my computer and still no internet. I repeated this process a number of times. It wasn’t until about 2 in the afternoon that I went back there for something else, opened the curtains, and noticed that the little lights on the router thingies were no longer flashing.

I knew those little fucks had been flashing earlier, so I crawled around under the desk and inhaled dust bunnies and other gross shit while I followed power cords and made sure everything was plugged in. I flipped the switch on the power strip off and on…

And then I had a slow-motion moment of clarity. The power strip was plugged in to the wall… where the lamp used to be… and the lamp could be turned on and off… with the light switch. I turned on the light switch and, lo, my internets returned.

And I texted my husband to tell him he was a butthole.

That is the story of why this blog post is late.

Today I am testing aluminum foil dryer sheets.

I know, I’m on a laundry kick this week. I’m just rolling with it, since it means I have clean laundry.

I haven’t used dryer sheets in years, mostly because I don’t care that much about my laundry being extra soft and smelly. I do use these:

They’re a little worse for the wear, and I don’t know if they do any good, but I always run them through the dryer with my stuff. So the idea of throwing something like a ball of aluminum foil in the dryer doesn’t seem that weird to me.

I did get a lot of interesting warnings when I pinned it though. Stuff like:

OMG you’ll catch your house on fire!

You’re going to tear up all your clothes!

The foil won’t catch on fire, but you might build up enough static to start a fire from the spark!

I appreciate you all looking out for me. But I tried it anyway.

I made a ball of foil about the same size as my dryer balls.

And then I took one of the dryer balls out of the dyer and replaced it with the foil ball.

And I did a load of towels.

I hate to be a spoilsport, but nothing caught on fire. And I realize I didn’t have any delicates in this load, but nothing got torn up either.

In fact, the only damage was a little further beating up of the one dryer ball I left in there.

My dryer was undamaged.

And my towels are… um… towely. As I’m not really sure what this thing is supposed to do, I guess it did it. I don’t have a huge problem with static in my towels anyway, but, um, maybe I would if I didn’t use dryer balls, or something.

In any case, you will not catch your house on fire if you do this. Go with my blessing, children.