How to Clean Crayon off of your Dryer.

I wish I didn't know the answer to the question: How do you clean crayon of of your dryer?

But, I do, so I thought I'd share.

 

And I made some more than helpful (totally useful) pictures to demonstrate how this works.  When my husband saw me over here playing around in "paint" he asked me what I was up to.

I told him, "I'm making a toothbrush".  He was confused.  So I explained what I was doing-- and he told me what was taking me a half an hour could easily be done in one minute using free clipart.  But I ask you-- Where's the fun in that?  I find a lot of fun in drawing in paint.

Plus, I didn't take any pictures, during-- I was too annoyed busy trying to save our dryer.

So about two weeks ago my dear 1st grader left a crayon in his pocket-- his favorite color "Bluish-Greenish" (I once told him this was my favorite color when I was a child-- so he's adopted the tradition). 

Of course, I only realized it was in our dryer when I began pulling out all of his clean laundry with traces of bluish-greenish melted crayon everywhere!

Annoyance quickly set it.  Then I consulted my favorite go-to resource, the internet.  It was there that I saw Lots of common themes-- heat up the dyer- use a credit card to scrap off everything, spray it down with WD-40, clean it off further....Then go to town trying to clean all the WD-40 out of everything, using hot soapy water-- still smelly of WD-40, clean it all again.  Still stink?  You know the drill.

Well, what was the point of cleaning something with one agent, just to have to use another cleaning agent to get it out?

I knew for sure I wanted to skip the stinky (and flammable) WD-40.

My method?  Worked like a charm.  It got all the crayon out and my dryer looked cleaner than it did to begin with.   So, here's how to clean crayon off of your dryer (without using WD-40).

STEP ONE: Heat up your empty dryer for 15 minutes, to get the crayon nice and soft.

STEP TWO: Scrap off as much of the crayon as you can using a credit card.  This works really well with the big chunks. 

STEP THREE: Scrub off what's left with a toothbrush and comet.  I made a bowl of hot water with comet in it and scrubbed off the last of the crayon.

                        

STEP FOUR: Once you're done, just to be careful, run a load of damp towels (that you don't mind getting crayon on) through the dryer to pick up any extra crayon you may have missed.

Worked like a charm.

Now just remind me to start checking pockets (I hate doing that).