Dinosaur Sheriff

It's the venting. In the USA, dryers have massive exhaust vents to the outside of the room/building that take the hot wet away and leave hot dry behind. In many other countries, dryers do not generally have external exhaust vents, and simply fill the room they are in with the hot wet, which may or may not be enough to actually remove the hot wet from the clothing depending on how well ventilated the room itself is.

for this reason 1) you generally can't leave the dryer open in winter without causing a draft and 2) sometimes when you're walking around outside in the US the world will suddenly smell of clean laundry because you're near someone's house and their dryer is running

And 3) Eventually your drier stops drying things so well and you have to hire somebody to bring a ladder up to the vent (either high up an exterior wall or on the literal roof) and clear out the accumulated lint and cruft blocking it

You ought to do this regularly even if the dryer efficiency remains the same, because dryer lint is fantastically competent at burning your damn house down if you let it catch fire.

I'm in Australia (no exhaust vents), and I've found that if your dryer starts making hot wet laundry, you first clean out the lint trap that you already know about and clean every time, and then you go looking for the second secret lint trap that nobody told you about and clean out the year's worth of lint in there that you were blissfully unaware of. The dryer will now mostly dry your laundry again, and give you either hot dry laundry or hot just-very-slightly-damp laundry.

This reminds me of the story about the couple who kept cleaning two different dryer vents and were confused why their so never cleaned the lint

That post was what first prompted me to go looking for a possible second lint trap

I'm genuinely appalled that dryers outside the US are not vented to the outside world. That much moisture just...builds up in your house/apartment every time you use your dryer?? Does that not lend itself to mold growth over time?

Mine recondenses the water into a little tub that I empty into a sink after use. I could also get a plumber in to vent the water directly into the greywater but I prefer being able to have the dryer in a part of the room with no direct water system access.

In Australia most people use clotheslines all the time, and even those of us who have dryers tend to only use them when the weather is too wet to make line drying practical. Electricity is expensive and sunlight is free. Can't speak for people living in city apartments and suchlike though.

Line drying, mostly.

I’m in the uk and every dryer ive seen has either had a removable condenser or has been piped into the wall/grey water like derin said. Most people over here use a clothes line or horse.

I'm sorry, a clothes line or a WHAT?

I was there, 52 years ago today, on my 10th birthday.

Okay, that is so cool – a souvenir dino being made for you as you watched? Could plastic be poured and set that quickly, or was it made out of something else? I love the look of delight on that little girl’s face. The giant (70’) brontosaurus is breathtaking; apparently it and the 45’ Tyrannosaurus Rex are still on display at Dinosaur Valley State Park, 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Texas.

Once again, the point. The Western aesthetic is one of America's coolest and queerest cultural constructs.

🥇🥔

They look so polite.