Hurricane Lint Lizard: Cleaning Made Easy — Our Review

Let me tell you a quick story. When I’m done, I guarantee you’ll be convinced you need a Hurricane Lint Lizard.

Almost exactly one year ago, I was having a typical afternoon, doing a few loads of laundry as I usually do every Monday. But about halfway through my routine — one load in the washer, another tumbling in the dryer — all the smoke detectors in my house started going off.

You know how sometimes you’ll be cooking something on the stove or burn something in the oven and the smoke detectors start going off, but you don’t think anything of it because you KNOW exactly what’s triggering the alarm? This was not one of those instances. I was in my kitchen, updating a few addresses in my contact book, and out of nowhere, both the first-floor and basement smoke detectors went off.

I immediately look around and sniff the air, and what do you know, it smells like smoke. So now I’m freaking out. At this point in the afternoon, my kids are still at school, but I’m expecting them home any minute, and the mom instinct in me is instantly panicking that they’re going to walk into a fire. All I know is that I have to figure out where the fire is. When I followed my nose, it led me straight to the basement.

One thing you should know before I continue — my home situation is a bit weird. When my husband and I moved into our home, we inherited most of the furniture. We bought our home from one of my husband’s clients, who was moving abroad and didn’t want to deal with selling or moving all of his furniture. So both the washer and the dryer came with the house.

Now, I make it a habit to clean the lint trap regularly, and I know my husband does as well because I’ve seen him doing it. However, we have no idea how often (if at all) the previous owners ever cleaned the lint trap or did any sort of maintenance at all on this dryer.

So I see a haze of smoke leading straight into the basement laundry room, and I instantly put two and two together and realize that the dryer must have caught on fire. We have a fire extinguisher in the garage, but at this point, there was so much smoke on the stairs that I didn’t even want to go down there to try and put it out. I grabbed my phone, called 911, and went out to the front lawn to wait.

Those five to 10 minutes of waiting for the fire department were some of the most anxious, horrible minutes of my life. I had no idea if the dryer would explode, if something else would catch on fire, or if my whole house would be destroyed by the time they put the fire out. I had no way of knowing how much lint was built up in the machine.

The firefighters put the fire out in about five minutes. My dryer was completely destroyed, and there were smoke stains all over the walls and ceilings. Everything ended up being fine and everyone was okay, but the SECOND the firefighters pulled that smoking, twisted hunk of metal out of my house and cleared the premises, I sat down at my laptop. First, I ordered a new dryer. Then I ordered the Hurricane Lint Lizard.

How Do You Use the Hurricane Lint Lizard?

The Hurricane Lint Lizard is a vacuum attachment designed to go deep into vents and other narrow spaces (like deep into your lint trap) to suck out dust, dirt, and debris. It basically has all the suctioning power of a vacuum, concentrated into a narrow suction head.

And when I say it goes deep, I mean it — this thing is over three feet long. It has a flexible tube design, so it can bend and twist as the vent does. You just move it in and out of the vent the same way you push a vacuum across the floor, and it scrapes up all the lint as it goes.

I have been so impressed with my Lint Lizard, and I wish I had known about it ages ago. It sure would’ve saved me a lot of anxiety and money a year ago! But what’s so great about this product is that it’s so easy and low-maintenance to use. Either my husband or I use it to clean out the vent to the lint trap every other week or so. All we have to do is attach the Lint Lizard to the end of our vacuum, suction up all of the lint, and remove the suction head again. It’s no more work than vacuuming itself.

How Does the Lint Lizard Make Your Home Safer?

Best of all, I’m no longer afraid that my dryer will catch fire and damage my home, or worse, injure one of my kids. It felt like such a weight was on my shoulders in the weeks after that dryer fire. But now that I’ve incorporated the Lint Lizard into my weekly cleaning routine, it feels like that weight has been removed. It gets the job done, and I can continue to live my life without living in fear.

The dryer I currently have is less than a year old, so I can’t speak to how this product extends the lifespan and efficacy of a dryer. But I imagine that for really old dryers (like the one that caught fire), it would go a long way toward extending their lifespan. Just like a vacuum needs to be emptied out regularly to function effectively and keep working for a long time, so too does a dryer. I only wish I realized that before mine caught on fire.

I highly recommend this product to anyone with an in-home drying unit (or even folks with communal washers and dryers in their basement). Even if you clean the lint trap regularly, you have no idea what’s building up in the lint trap vent beyond where your hands can reach.

It’s going to do three things for you: First, it keeps your dryer running at maximum efficiency. Second, it prevents expensive dryer repairs and replacements when yours inevitably poops out after working twice as hard as it needs to thanks to a clogged lint vent. And third, and most importantly, it keeps you and your family safe by preventing lint trap fires.

Purchase Lint Lizard for Peace of Mind

I would do anything to go back and tell my past self about this product. Even though no one got hurt and it all ended up working out okay, the thought of what would have happened if the dryer had caught fire when one of my kids was in the basement is still too scary for me to even contemplate. That’s why I’ve sat down to write this incredibly long review. I need to do what I can to get the word out and convince other people to buy the Lint Lizard and hopefully avoid my mistakes.

The Hurricane Lint Lizard is effective, affordable, and, beyond that, a safety essential in any home with a dryer, just like a fire extinguisher. I cannot recommend it more.