In-Laws from Hell·
THE DRYER DILEMMA
A first-time homeowner ponders whether to leave the dryer running when stepping out, sparking a wider debate about caution and modern home life.
Stay home or leave with the dryer running?
Be one of the first to vote.
The line came out over something as ordinary as a load of laundry: "I would never leave my home while the dryer was running."
That was the sister-in-law's position, delivered without hesitation, and it caught the poster off guard. As a first-time homeowner, they had never really stopped to think about it. The dryer was just the dryer, set it, wait, fold the clothes later. But suddenly, the machine in the laundry room had become the center of a question about what people do, and what they refuse to do, when they walk out the door.
The poster laid it out plainly: "Do you leave your home if the dryers running?" The question landed in the kind of everyday territory that feels simple until someone says it aloud and everyone realizes they may not be on the same page.
For the poster, the issue wasn't just personal habit. It was also a test of whether a first homeownership instinct was missing something obvious. Maybe there was a rule, a modern caution, an old warning passed down through families. Maybe other people never leave a dryer running unattended. Or maybe that kind of worry belongs to another era entirely.
That's what the poster wanted to know. They asked whether other people leave the house while the dryer is running, and whether they were being naive for thinking the caution sounded outdated.
The wording was direct: "Am I naive that this seems to be an outdated way of thinking?"
No alarms had gone off. No dryer had caught fire. No incident had happened to force the question. It was simply a moment where two ways of living collided: one person who would never leave home with the dryer on, and another who had honestly never considered that stopping point before.
The result was a small domestic debate with a surprisingly sharp edge. Is a running dryer something to stay home for, or just another appliance humming in the background while life continues outside? The poster left the question open, curious whether the sister-in-law's rule was common sense, caution, or a habit that belongs to an older house-and-home world.