How I Removed the mildew smell from my smelly washing machine using Affresh, Vinegar, and Oxiclean

These are the steps that worked for me to remove the mildew odor from my front loading washing machine. My washing machine was really smelly from the mold on the inside of it.

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.

Maintenance

• 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."

Smelly Washing Machine vs Soap Scum

Alright. Yes. I still have a smelly washing machine. Now I have to say that I've done a multitude of things to get my washing machine into an acceptable state that it's not smelling so foul that my wife and I gag when we open the laundry room door. Anyways, I digress.

I did some research on other sites to see what I might be missing. I ran across a couple articles stating that it's soap scum. Step 4 of this article states that non-HE soap will cause soap scum build up which causes mold to accumlate. Step 3 from this article states that vinegar will remove the soap scum residue from the washer.

Let's revisit this. I've been using non-HE powdered soap, HE powered soap, and liquid HE soap in this washer. At first, we've been running on liquid HE soap for a couple years before the odor came full force maybe several months ago. We've since switched to powdered soap. We've got non and HE soap. I still have the problem. So I don't know if the non-HE or HE argument really holds up well.

Now as for soap scum, that is exceptionally plausible. I have to say that when I used the Affresh, a lot of crap came off. It was flakey black moldy crap. But when I used the vinegar, it really didn't seem to make that much a difference. Now the second article mentions that it has to be done after the spin cycle. I'll have to check this out and see.

Soap scum for HE machines can be caused by using too much soap. Found this site that mentions you only need to have a tablespoon of soap. Additionally the site covers why this is a problem for HE machines specifically. Then it goes on how to implement a shock treatement for your washer.

So basically, I think at the end of the day. Soap scum is at the heart of the problem. Seems to have several different sources around the web to verify that this is actually the problem. I'll come back and do more research and testing on my washer to verify all this.

Smelly Washing Machine vs Steam

I went back to the site to see what the issue was for mold and steam. The site deals mostly with mold and allergies. It's interesting to me because my son has allergies along with eczema so figuring out this washer problem may be a cause for some of the issues he might be experiencing.


It looks like that mold can be removed via steam. Supposedly steam cleaners will put out about 180-220 degree heat which will kill most mold. Apparrently mold will be killed off at temps of 160 degrees and above. With that knowledge and assuming that I can verify that on a few other sources, then the water heater that I have will not be anywhere near the temperture that I need to effectively sanitize my washer. I think the top most temperture that I can put my water heater at is 140. To be reasonable, I don't need 160 degree water running in my house. I'll be burning the skin off my family and guests if I did. I'll definitely have to look into this as a solution as well. Not only for my washer but other things in the house.

Smelly Washing Machine vs a Red Light

I went to visit an Air Force base and there was a docent restoring an old transport plane on the base. He mentioned that they had a mold problem on the airplanes. To keep the mold problem to manageble level, they used a red light filter to maintain or kill the mold??? Either way, I looked up some mold remediation sites and found that there are some products that use UV-C light to kill and sanitize surfaces for mold. Now, I'm not sure how I can use this information to fix my smelly washing machine but thoughts are going through my mind that it might be a viable way to address the problem that I have. I can't say or know if it'll be effective since I can't directly wand over the part of the washer that has the problem but who knows.

Starting to think about sharks with "lasers" on their head now.

Smelly Washing Machine vs SmellyWasher

I was able to get the single bottle version of this product for about $20 online. I had this a while back but never really got to use this as a single application for fighting the mold or mildew problem in my washer. After using the rest of the liquid detergent, my odors came back and I finally got to use this product for the first time.

So I started off with the hot water wash. My water temp was set for 140 degrees on my water heater. I added a couple caps to the wash. Directions mentioned that I only needed one but figured two might be better than one. I ran the wash for a couple minutes and stopped it. I added more hot water until about a third of the washer was filled. I ran the washer for a few more minutes then shut it off and soaked overnite. In the morning I started the washer again. After the wash finished, I poked my head into the washer and smelled a faint odor. I have no idea what my washer smelled like when it was new but the mold and mildew odor was gone and it had this neutral smell.

So for the most part, I'm really happy with this product. I'll have to see if the problem will come back or will persist like it has before but for the time being, I'm a happy camper.

Smelly Washing Machine vs the Open Door Policy

With most of the front load washers, there's a lot of recommendations that you have to keep the front door open to enable the inside washing drum to air dry out. I have to say that for the first few years that owned my washer that I did NOT do that. I think that after year 3 of owning my washer that I started to have an odor problem with mold in the machine. I've been through about 3-4 different types of liquid detergents and I haven't been able to pinpoint which one is causing or caused the problem.

Currently, we're using powdered detergent. Additionally, we're also leaving the front washer door open so that the washer airs out. For about 3 weeks, we had NO odor coming from the washer. Note: this is after the fact that I ran the machine through a battery of cleaning techniques to get rid of the mold and odor. I went back to liquid detergent to finish it out after our test batch of powder detergent was used up. My odors did come back even with the door left open. Now while the odor wasn't as bad as it was before. It did come back. With that in mind, we have definitely switched back to powdered soap. The detergent we were using was a Costco liquid HE detergent but I can't remember which one it was. I'll have to say that I have to see whether the odor comes back after a few weeks with powdered or not to rule out a timeline possibility with odor but I highly suspect that it is the case that the detergent causes the build up.

Smelly Washing Machine vs Oxiclean

From a previous post, I can't say whether it was Oxiclean that did the job or if it was the Affresh. I munged these two techniques together at one time so I can't really confirm or deny their effectiveness as a single cleaning agent or remedy to the mold problem in washers. However, if you can build a cocktail of cleaning agents that does the trick then what does it really matter. Ok for the people who really want to know so they can buy one or the other, then I guess it does matter but I suspect that many other people have something like this in their house already. It's a great multi-purpose cleaner anyways.

I may have to put this to a round two test soon with new and different application techniques. Muhahahaha.