I love the smell of butane in the springtime . . .

All my dry clothes smell like lighter fluid.

Actually we first noticed the scent about ten minutes after I started the dryer today. (We=me and my parents. I do laundry at their house). At first, we were panicking, trying to figure out if something was leaking. We knew it wasn't natural gas, but it didn't smell like the wax my dad had been using on the furniture today, either. After racking our brains for half an hour and opening the windows to air out the house, I finally did a Google search.

Turns out, certain oil-based stains/waxes/etc. put fumes into the air that are harmless; however, when they go into the dryer intake and start to get cooked, they smell very distinctly like lighter fluid. The good news is, it's not harmful and the effect will go away when the wax/stain is dry. The bad news is, the smell does indeed get into the clothes.

I ran the dryer on the cool air setting for about half an hour after the heat cycled finished, on the recommendation of this web page. Well . . . it's better than it could be. But my clean laundry still smells like it's ready for a bonfire. I have everything strewn out around my room in hopes that it'll air out a little.