Living Well: Healthy Tip #5

For several days now, I've been writing an ongoing series of diet and fitness posts titled "Why the Pounds Are Sticking Around," which are a collection of tips sourced from the health magazine Self. Since the response has been so positive, I decided to forge ahead with an idea I had for a series of healthy living posts. Since exercise and training are more my forte, I sought out information from an outside source -- Men's Health magazine. To that end, I found ten great health and wellness tips that I thought would be perfect for pieces on healthy living.

So, just as I have been doing with the diet and fitness posts, I will also be posting one healthy living tip per day as part of a series I think I'm going to call "Living Well." I think you'll find these tips to be as interesting and as helpful as I did.

Healthy Tip #5 - Don't let lint become flint

For the most part, this is something directed more at the guys than the girls. Even though us fellas like to think we could handle any crisis situation, sometimes our lack of at-home know-how is what gets us in trouble in the first place. Case in point: Dryer lint.

Honestly, I didn't even know this stuff was flammable until about three years ago. Fortunately, my lesson wasn't learned after a fire broke out; rather, it was after reading about such an incident in a magazine I perused while in my dentist's waiting area. According to that article, as well as one that appears in the current edition of Men's Health, there are close to 315 dryer-fire deaths each year, all of which are directly related to an excess of lint stored in the trap.

How often should you change your dryer lint trap? Since I of course had no idea, I just looked it up. Based on what I read on About.com, it should be cleaned before every use. Not only will it lessen the chance of starting a bonfire, but it will also save you money.