If you can't beat 'em...

Our cozy little apartment has a stackable washer and dryer tucked away in a closet. (The closet has French doors and two weeks ago I walked past and was horrified to notice that the slats were covered in lint and dust. I dropped everything and cleaned them, much to the chagrin of my husband who said, "I bet nobody even noticed that before. I never did and I live here.")

But last Wednesday, the spin cycle on our washer gave up the ghost.

"Joey, something's wrong with this washer. The towels are dripping wet." He came over to analyze and, after a short time, it was decided that our washer was busted and there was nothing left to do but call Maintenance.

The next day when we came home there was a note on our table telling us that our washer and dryer unit was to be replaced.

"I'm so excited!" I squealed. "Maybe the new one will be more energy efficient! And quieter!"

Joey was kind of ambivalent about the whole affair, mostly because the discovery of a new washer-dryer unit came around dinner time and he was hungry.

Later in the evening, though, when I was pulling out whatever had been in the dryer, I thought of something. I glanced down in the space between the washer and the wall and I gasped.

Now, for those of you who may be deceived and think I'm really...neurotic about keeping my house clean, this'll bring you a good dose of reality. (Mom, don't read this next part. You will lose all confidence in my housekeeping abilities.) For the last year, instead of throwing the lint from my dryer away, I have been stuffing it in the space between the washer and the wall. I began doing this after we moved in and I noticed that someone before us had done the same. It was disgusting, true, but all the lint was already down there and lint is disgusting anyway...so I figured I'd just join in.

But, friends, after a year of lint removal...the lint is now entirely fills the empty space between the washer and the wall (it's a good 2 1/2 inches) and is halfway up the washer.

"JOEY! What do we do? The repairmen are going to get avalanched by lint when they come to change out our washer and...nobody was ever supposed to know that I do this!"

He glanced down at The Lint Problem. "Ooh. Yeah, that's bad. Maybe the vacuum? We could suck it out with one of the attachments?"

"That might work," I said. And then we forgot about it.

Until today. I called the office to find out when they were replacing my unit and was told by a cheerful lady, "Oh, today probably."

The lint!! I thought. I am so in for it when I get home....it will be all over my carpet...and my secret will be totally out. The repairman is going to think I'm the biggest, scurviest housekeeper he's ever encountered and he'll tell all his repairman friends about the lint cache he found in our apartment.

This is what I get for just assuming that stuffing lint down a crack would make it go away.

But you wanna know something really bad? I used to throw the lint behind the dryer when I was a kid. Even though I knew I wasn't supposed to. (I really hope Mom stopped reading way up there or she'll probably make a huge lint mess in my house when they come down in May to pay me back for my childhood disobedience.)