There was a time when a huge storm came rolling in and tons of stuff got soaking wet. I thought that there wasn't going to be anything that I could do to fix the problem. Countless books, magazines, articles and important documents were all on the brink of being washed away. At that time, I didn't know any document drying methods.



I thought long and hard and something finally came to mind. I would just let the papers air dry. There were papers every where in the house and outside too. Drying on a clothesline in the backyard was just one thing to do to save a few of them. This was a very bizarre moment for me, as I never really had to worry about document drying before. And these papers meant a lot to me.

There was of course, only so much room on the clothesline to dry off these documents. Another way had to be thought of, and suddenly I got another idea. This time I would use the actual dryer to do the job. I thought that the lose papers would be just fine if there wasn't a whole lot of them. But then again, what cycle do you put papers on? There certainly wasn't any recommendation from the company so I went with a low setting. Just think of fluffy pillows. To make them have a fresh scent, and to prevent static cling, I put in a dryer sheet while drying documents. One batch later and everything was going good. Load it up again and away we go. I had indeed discovered a document drying revolution.

But there still was a problem with drying the books and such. I decided that these would not dry left as is, but neither could these be torn apart. The big books went into the oven on low heat and magazines in the toaster oven. I know now that this might seem strange to do at first, but it can be done. Just remember to rotate every 10 minutes so that the edges don't get brown. After doing this for a little while, I decided that there should be a book for document drying for this. Maybe I should be the one to make that happen.

Even after a day of document drying using various methods of heat, there was still more to be done. The one appliance that I had not thought to use yet was the microwave. Of course, what other appliance cooks food faster than the trusty microwave. Thirty seconds each on high heat should do just the trick. Yes, I was doing some serious document drying at lightning speed. Nothing could stop me now. Or maybe nothing but the power that went out because many appliances were being used all at once.

Looking back at the situation, there really wasn't anything that could have been done to prevent the damage done to all those papers. It was now just a matter of how I was going to be able to make the documents dry without damaging them. I can't imagine how I must have looked like to someone else. There were papers out on the clothesline, in the oven, microwave, dryer and any other place that was able to get the water out. Clearly, I had made document drying into an Olympic sport and I was to hold the gold in all divisions. You haven't lived until you've had the pleasure of a birth certificate smelling like mountain spring fresh.