Our clothes dryer died on Thursday when my wife Liz was home sick trying to get some rest. She searched the web and diagnosed the problem right away — a broken belt. After finding a YouTube video showing how to fix it, she decided that we could fix it on our own.

This dryer is old by modern standards — 14 years old. We bought it before our youngest child was born. The store we purchased it from, H.H. Gregg, has long since closed.1 The washing machine that we bought to go with it died years ago. I wondered if it was even worth repairing, but I watched the video and agreed that it looked pretty straightforward. Our local Lowe’s had a compatible belt in stock and it was only $16.99. I figured if we couldn’t make it work, we’d invested less than $20 in the repair.

This afternoon, we watched the video together on the Apple TV and got to work.

The disassembly process wasn’t too hard, but was made more complicated by the limited space to work in the laundry room. We got the dryer disassembled and Liz kept track of all the parts and screws and where they went. This was critical, because some of the screws in each step were different.

The amount of lint and dust inside the dryer was a little insane. We took the time to vacuum in the inside and wipe down all of the surfaces. And in the process, we found 94 cents and a couple of small Legos.

We reassembled the dryer, remembering to reconnect all of the electrical connections and slid it back into position. It started right up. Total elapsed time was less than an hour.

Liz and I couldn’t have done it without working together. When we were first married, I was trying to fix some blinds in the apartment. It wasn’t going well until Liz started working with me. And from that point forward, we decided that we needed to work together on things like this. Better together. This repair was definitely a two-person job, especially getting the belt around the drum. We could have called an appliance repair person, but chose not to. I haven’t had great luck getting appliances fixed. The cost to repair is usually as expensive as purchasing a replacement.

We tend to live in an era where appliances like these are simply disposable. So I’m glad we were able to do a DIY repair. We couldn’t have done it without YouTube. It really does help to be able to see the process. I need to remember to think repair first, instead of mindlessly replacing something that still has life left in it.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. In fact, the whole chain declared bankruptcy in 2017 and closed all of its stores. It lives on as an online retailer. ↩︎