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My new dryer has a large lint filter on the top. When I remove it, lint and dust fall off the filter onto the top of the dryer, and the dust floats off into the air as well.

In the second picture below, you can see the black dust on top of the dryer.

Lint trap opened on dryer

Lint trap removed, showing lint on the dryer surface

How can I remove the lint trap cleanly? Please no solutions that involve cleaning up the dust afterwards. I refuse to believe dryers of this type were designed so badly that they always make a mess.

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  • ugh. i hate poor designs like this one. reminds me of things that hold water (think: water extractor waste tank, that sort of thing) which are shaped so that it's very difficult to get all the water out.
    – Michael
    Dec 14, 2022 at 22:41
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    "I refuse to believe..." - There will be a day when you will become a believer. You do not believe me? Please consider the fact that there are books written about how bad design is released by companies. One of them is "The Design Of Everyday Things" by Norman, Don, written in 1988. Unfortunately, you are not the only frustrated person about bad designs.
    – virolino
    Dec 15, 2022 at 8:34

3 Answers 3

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Several things come to mind.

Put something under the filter to catch the falling dust, a piece of cloth will do, as will a sheet of paper like a part of a page of a news paper.

Have your vacuum cleaner running with its tube as its soft or hard tubular end and hold the end next to or under the filter when you lift it out. If you can not do it at the same time you can use the vacuum afterwards to clean off the dust without it going all over.

And an other option might be to clean your dust catcher less often, (read instructions on your dryer before you try this) as the longer period will give a thicker dust layer on the filter, which does not fall apart so readily.

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    Upvote, but I'm frustrated thinking that the dryer company requires customers to use another "tool" (cloth, paper, vacuum) to avoid making a mess with their product.
    – BrettFromLA
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:42
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    I particularly agree with the last paragraph. When I empty the filter of my dryer, it contains what can only be described as a "mat" of matted fibres. It probably has all sorts of dust and debris embedded within it - but hardly any mess is caused when removing it from the filter.
    – Lefty
    Jan 7, 2019 at 14:04
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Try putting a plastic bag flattened on top of the filter handle. Then pull on the handle through the bag. The whole filter will be pulled into the bag. If the bag was arranged carefully to begin with, the lint that would have fallen on the dryer instead falls on the inside of the bag.

Gently remove the lint while the filter is in the bag and gently extract the filter. As another poster has suggested, run a vacuum nearby to catch any lint that floats in the air. Or maybe use paper with tacky spray on the upper side, or tape, or even just wet the top of the dryer, to catch any lint that falls.

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If possible, have a small trash can or bag set up directly adjacent to the lint trap. Use a dryer sheet the "scrape" the trap as you pull it out, which will cause the dust/lint to slide off in a clump; wipe up the remaining debris with the dryer sheet. Personally, I do this after every load with a fresh dryer sheet, which I'll clean/shake off and stick into the chamber so it's good to go for the following load.

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