How to Care for Your Hairdryer
Confessions from a Dusty Apartment: That is my hairdryer’s filter and yes, it is dusty and covered in lint. No wonder it was failing to perform!
We clean our homes. We clean our brushes (or at least pretend we do). Frequently, though, styling tools get neglected. Sure, you might be removing excess hair from your brushes as it accumulates, but are you cleaning your hot tools? What about your hairdryer? Yeah – didn’t think so! Fortunately, it is super easy (inexpensive, and quick!) to care for your hairdryer.
Like many people, I left my hairdryer to face neglect. My dryer isn’t a fancy, performance dryer like a Neuro or Speed Freak. Instead, it is a modest (yet delightfully effective) Conair that my husband gifted me a few years ago. I was sad, earlier this year, when its performance started to wane. One day, I noticed that the dryer itself started to seem a bit hotter than usual although the air it was outputting was not. To top that off, the airflow wasn’t as powerful, either. After first giving it a quick blast with a can of compressed air to dislodge some of the fluff, I noticed an immediate improvement in my dryer’s performance. Shockingly, the picture above is after the compressed air. Oops. Then, I set out to do it, “right.”
The Right Way
If you have an awesome appliance like the DataVac blower I referenced in my previous Favorites post, grab that. Otherwise, a microfiber cloth will do (and will be needed anyway.
- To start: I popped the filter latch (on this model, there’s a little lip at the top that you use to swing it down).
- Then, I violently blew out the rest of the debris, first from the nozzle of the dryer out through the back, then through only the open filter, then side to side on the filter itself.
- After that, I grabbed a clean, dry microfiber cloth and worked the rest of the dust and lint out of the grate that couldn’t be blown out.
All said and done, my dryer performs like it did when I first unboxed it! All cleaned up, it looks like this:
The Bottom Line
Before I cleaned my dryer, I thought I was going to be out $30-50 on a new one (I won’t spend a ton on one; for home use, I’m not convinced that spending more is worth it). Thanks to these steps, though, I’ve renewed my hairdryer’s vigor.
From start to finish, the steps I described to care for your hairdryer take less than five minutes. While many appliances aren’t built with the same quality and durability as they used to, a little care and maintenance can do a lot for longevity. Regardless of your budget, in my opinion, you, “can’t afford,” not to take care of your tools.