Sorry to disappoint you

I'll give you 3 chances to guess what these pictures are...

Anyone who does laundry has it figured out.  Yes, that's the inside of my dryer.

Now I'm sorry to disappoint you if you are still raising young children and think that one day you will no longer have to deal with crayon marks on the walls and marker stains on clothes and furniture, etc.

No, even if your children have left home, you will still deal with some heavy duty messes. Especially if they bring their laundry home.

Someone in my family, who will remain nameless, used to have better laundry facilities than I do in HER first apartment away from home, free of charge. In fact, I wanted to cart my laundry to HER place to do it. This past year however, in her new place she has to pay for laundry, so yah....the trips home always involve laundry these days. Normally, I'd let her do it, but it makes no sense not to also throw our laundry in the same load to save money. So last weekend, I did the laundry.

Thought I checked all the pockets! But to my horror, I saw these marks in the dryer as I pulled the clothes out.

Although I have been involved in money laundering, washed and dried a wallet, blasted some kleenex to bits, and am forever producing some sparkling clean guitar picks, this was my first ever BLACK PERMANENT marker - top OFF. Who cares that there was also a pen and a lip balm in the same pocket....Would this be a good time to mention that the afore-mentioned unnamed member of the family once washed her cellphone??

Remarkably, the clothes seemed to be unaffected which was a huge blessing.

So now...how to get the dryer clean? I tried a few things....even the Magic Eraser that always works for everything else, didn't work. I thought of asking my husband to use some stronger elbow grease and scrub away at it, but he's been too busy mopping up the mess the washing machine made a few days later when it bounced around and knocked the hose out of the wash tub! (It's a wonder we have any clean clothes). The water spread considerably from the laundry room into the adjoining games room, so he had to take a morning off work to move a two-ton (I exaggerate) pool table, heavy sewing machine cabinet, and a thousand other things (I exaggerate), and then use a wet vaccuum over the whole area.

So I googled.

I found out that toothpaste with baking soda works like a charm, as does rubbing alcohol, although both still require a lot of scrubbing at an awkward angle....so I'm doing a little at a time each time I'm throwing something in the washing machine............................

after checking the pockets.................

all of them..........

twice.

Fortunately, I had stocked up on Arm & Hammer toothpaste on sale this week, though I thought it would be used on teeth. I may even have to return for more before the job's done........but hey, I'm all for polishing enamel wherever it is....and bonus.....the dryer has 'a hint of minty freshness' (to quote my favourite Donkey).