I think it's been about six months now since I started to document how my washing machine's odor has impacted my life. Unfortunately I have to say that while I want to eradicate the odor completely, I'm just not able to. It feels like a disease that i just can't get rid of and will have to just live with by managing the odor that occurs from time to time. Maybe in a few months, I'll find a cure to my problem to permanently remove this odor but only time will tell.
Why it smells
After all these months, basically come to the realization that I have a build of soap scum on the inner drum of my front loading washing machine. Over time, that layer of soap scum gets a moldy mildewy smell from some kind of organism called smellius stinkius idunnowhatitscalled. Either way it turns into this black crusty stuff and feeds on that soapy dirt human oil residue. One way or another you have to get rid of that top layer of crustiness and then the underlying soap scum that it feeds on.
How to get rid of it
Based on what I had to go through, this is eventually what I had to do to get my washer from emanating a wretched odor from my laundry room. It was so bad that I had to put towels beneath the door so i wouldn't smell the washer.
- Start with a bleach wash to kill off that surface mold. That will definitely reduce the odor in a significant way but you won't be close to being done. Use about a cup or two with hot water. Run it for the longest setting with the hottest water.
- Affresh - yeah i had doubts but i suspect that most of my results came from this product. At roughly $9 for a pack of 3, it's a small cost to replacing your washer. I'm still debating whether this is hockey puck is really just a solid piece of Oxiclean. Either way i don't care anymore. Put one or two in with as much hot extra hot water your washer can hold without overflowing. Since it's a low water high efficiency washer, i had to add roughly 2 gallons of extra water. I turned off my washer after the water finished and it started the wash. At that point, i had a tub of water and about 2 pucks of Affresh soaking. I rotated the drum every 20 minutes for about an hour til I had the drum soaked in each section. Then i let it finish wash normally for the last hour.
- Vinegar bath. I used about 3-4 cups of vinegar and let it soak in the tub overnite. For my washer, i had to stop the wash (turn it off) so it wouldn't drain the vinegar from the tub. Rotate the drum every other hour for as long as you have patience. I did this for about 3-4 hours until most of my washer was soaked. Then run the wash on the hottest cycle you can and add extra hot water to fill the drum.
- Oxiclean - Finish off the wash with some oxiclean if you have it. Somewhere between the Affresh and Vinegar runs, i had a ton of black flakes come out of the wash. I was using oxiclean and couple old towels to check on the progress to wait until the last of the flecks came off. At this point my washer wasn't smelling and had a pretty neutral smell.
- Keep the door open - this should help keep airflow in the washer so it doesn't become musty
- Use less soap - apparently you don't need the cup full of soap that mfg recommends. the extra soap is to ensure that your wash is done. However, too much soap leads to the build up of soap scum and thus the mold and mildew smell. I've been using rough a tablespoon of soap and haven't noticed a difference in quality of the wash at this point.
- Use powdered soap - i switched to Charlie's soap and away from the liquid soap. It take a little longer for the odor to come back before i have to repeat and rinse the above cleaning steps. It's been about 3 months since i had to do this. The odor is mild when i did do it. basically, i had to stuff my head close to the washer door to smell something.
- Use super hot water - and if you can, use it on the last load of the day. at one point and i suspect that the problem started to occur when for a couple reasons. One i turned down the thermostat on my water heater to 115. Typically i use mix cold water at the faucets with my hot water for anything i do. But that in turn means that my water is less than hot when it hits the washer. Two, we were using cold water wash and rinse for most of the washes. Cold water doesn't get crap off of anything without a ton of soap, which then means you have to use more water to get the extra soap off during the final rinse. Anyways, just use hot water and call it a day and use it as your last wash to get the rest of the day's wash off the inside of the machine.
- SmellyWasher - So yes, i've gotten this as well. And i have tried it during a maintenance mode clean up for my washer. I will say that it does get the odor out and set to a neutral smell as well after it's wash. I did the same thing to let it soak and rotate the drum to get full coverage and leave overnight. However, I did get the odor back sooner. Either this product needs to be repeatedly used at certain durations or it really didn't clean my washer as well as it should have. Either way, it's an alternative if you want to try another product.
- Add extra water - I really think this step is what really makes a difference in the post maintenance phase. Adding the extra water in my case, has made the clothes come out a little cleaner where we don't have to rinse again. Don't know why it just does.
Overall these are the steps that I used to get that mildew moldy smell out of my front loading washing machine. If you're reading this, I hope that you find this useful. Granted, there might be other steps out there that might more effective or efficient but this certainly worked for me after all these months.
Update May 2013
Roughly a year ago, I noted that the smell has mostly disappeared. It mostly happened either coincidentally or was a causality of the powdered soap with borax. We used that for a couple months and the smell really just disappeared. Still followed the maintenance but didn't seem to need to do that as often. Additionally, switched to another powdered soap and its been pretty odorless for the last several months now. Overall it seems normal now. I've got a Maytag Neptune front loader washing machine and using All - Free and Clear living odor free now.
Survey
Just for fun, I built a survey to identify what washers and detergents are currently being used before the smelly washer state. If you have a smelly washing machine, please share. I'll be posting the results once I get enough responses. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YK32LPW
Findings from survey
Here it is. There's roughly four questions. The main two that are likely relevant would be the manufacturer and the detergent type. My takeaway would be that we're using too much detergent. Aka... "If one cup is ok two is better."
