Man, that lint plug is like every clogged drain I have ever dealt with. People keep pouring stuff down the sink and wonder why the water backs up, when the real mess is two feet down the pipe where they cant see it. Same deal with your dryer. The machine was never the problem, it was just the messenger telling you something downstream was stuffed. We love fixing the thing right in front of our face and ignore the hidden junk that actually caused it. Check the whole path first, every time, or you are just gonna be back out there next month.

Man, I feel this. I did the same thing with flat fixes one year and hit 380 tubes, but like 70 of them were one guy who kept riding through the same glass patch on his route. What helped me was splitting my tally into two columns, repeat wheels and new ones, so I could actually see how much was real work versus the same problem coming back. That made the number way less depressing and way more useful.