The Easiest Way to Clean Your Washing Machine
Your washing machine cleans your clothes, so you should clean your washing machine. It’s a simple concept, but one we don’t think about too often. The washing machine doesn’t always strike me as something that can be cleaned or even tidied up, but it actually gets quite dirty after scrubbing the dirt off all of our clothes and towels. Sometimes the washing machine even stinks, which is a good enough reason to do it. Here’s the easiest way to do it.
Why clean your washing machine?
The reasons to clean your washing machine go beyond aesthetics and smells: soap and chemical residue from your detergent, as well as anything else that’s on your clothes, can create an unpleasant film inside. Not only can this clog your machinery, making the entire operation less efficient, but it can also act as a trap for bacteria.
Clean your washing machine with baking soda and vinegar
You don’t need anything fancy—just vinegar and baking soda, although the methods you use to spray them vary depending on which tutorial you watch. I used to just pour about a cup of vinegar straight into the drum and fill the hot empty load. This has always worked well for me in eliminating odor, but you can take it up a notch. Just recently I poured baking soda into the drum and put a cup of vinegar directly into the detergent tray.
I’ve read that you can put baking soda in the fabric softener tray, but I don’t like the idea of something grainy that wasn’t meant to be used inside a washer running through all the components. Adding it to the drum seemed safer to me, and when I completed the clean cycle, which was a simple empty cycle on a hot setting, there were no side effects.
Washing machine cleaning results
The “vinegar in a tray and baking soda in a barrel” technique worked well and left the inside of the car shiny where before it wasn’t necessarily noticeably dirty, but you could tell it had been used.
The odors also disappeared, which was my main goal this time. However, for this to happen, it’s worth leaving the machine open to allow it to ventilate and dry completely after the cleaning cycle (and, in my opinion, after a normal load of laundry too). Be sure to ventilate the beast so as not to ruin your cleaning efforts.
This is just a simple way to clean the inside of the machine, but remember that periodically you will have to look deeper inside to find the washing machine filter and clean it. This is more complicated and you will need to find the owner’s manual. Be prepared for it to be full of disgusting old water, lint, and other gunk. You’ll be cleaning it with mild soap and water and should do it quarterly, sprinkling in the old vinegar and baking soda trick in between.