Find out what to do when a book goes in the washing machine! One day when I was rushing to get the housework finished, I made this careless mistake. I tossed my daughter’s copy of The Secret Garden in the washing machine. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what happened until the machine had run its cycle.

How does something like this even happen?! Well, we had been staying up late while she read the book to me. When she went to sleep, instead of putting the book on top of her comforter, she placed it between her sheets. The next morning when I gathered up the sheets, I took off any visible toys, but I didn’t shake the sheets to double check that nothing else stuck to them. Now, I know to make sure that nothing makes its way into the laundry basket with the sheets because fixing this error was not a fun task.

Figuring out what to do when a book goes in the washing machine is simple. You can have your home back in order with a few simple steps. However this situation happened to you, I’m here to help.

You will need:

• Garbage can
• Paper towels
• Vacuum cleaner

One safety warning I must give is that you could start a fire if you are not careful. Make sure in step #2 not to walk away for even a minute since it can get dangerous fast with the lint trap filling rapidly.

Pick out shreds of paper from the washing machine

When I first opened my washing machine, I knew from the tiny print that the paper must be from the 300 page book my daughter and I had been reading together. 300 pages had been shred up into tiny pieces, and they were stuck on every surface of every item of clothes.

This was a much bigger deal than if someone had left one piece of paper in their pocket. Since the quantity of the paper was so massive, it made sense to try to remove as much paper as I could by hand.

I removed the clothes from the washing machine, and I shook them out over the laundry basket. Large chunks of paper fell off easily without needing to scrape or brush it off. I tried to keep as much of the paper contained over the laundry basket as I could because it made getting the paper to the trash can easier. Plenty of paper ended up on the floor anyway. Waiting to vacuum until the very end made the most sense because the paper kept falling throughout this entire process.

Using a dry paper towel, I wiped out all the paper left in the washing machine. It came off easily.

Put the clothes in the dryer

Using the dryer to remove the paper was fast and effective, but it could have been dangerous. I put all the clothes in the dryer. Every 2 minutes, the lint trap completely filled with paper, and it needed to be emptied. I did this until all of the clothes were dry. If any clothes had paper left on after they were dry, I put them back in the dryer for a minute, and the lint trap collected the paper off of them.

It’s also a good idea to clean the dryer vent afterwards. Cleaning the dryer vent should happen once a year anyway, but with all the additional paper going in the machine, it’s smart to remove any that could have escaped from the lint trap.

Throw out the trash, and vacuum

Finally, I gathered all the paper, and I placed it in the trash. I vacuumed the area starting with the inside of the washing machine, moving on to the dryer and lint trap, and then finishing with the floor.

After following these steps, no paper was left on my clothes or in my washer and dryer! No harm was done except to the book, which we made sure to replace.

Hopefully, this solution is a quick fix for you too.

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