· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Appliance Repair
Front-loading washers use less water and spin faster than top loaders, and the same features that make them efficient leave them damp inside between loads. A rubber door gasket that holds a pool of water at the bottom, a drum that never fully drains, and a sealed door that traps humidity are the conditions mold and bacteria want. Nashville summer humidity gives them the rest. The smell is biofilm, and it is manageable.
Where the smell lives
The door gasket, the large rubber bellows around the opening, has a fold at the bottom that holds water, lint and detergent residue after every load. Pull the fold back and the black growth is usually right there. The outer drum, the tub the visible drum spins inside, is where water and residue sit that never drain fully. The detergent drawer and its housing grow the same film from the detergent and softener left in them.
None of these get hot enough or dry enough to stop growth on their own. The washer is a warm, damp, dark box with a food supply, and it is closed most of the day.
What makes it worse
Too much detergent is the main one. High-efficiency washers need very little, a tablespoon or two of a concentrated HE detergent, and using a regular amount leaves suds and residue that biofilm feeds on. Fabric softener is worse still; it is a waxy coating that builds up inside the machine. Cold water washing, which most households now default to, never gets the interior warm enough to disturb the film.
Closing the door immediately after the load, leaving wet laundry in the drum for hours, and washing in a laundry closet with no airflow all keep the interior damp. In a Middle Tennessee summer the machine may not dry out inside at all between loads.
- Too much detergent, or non-HE detergent
- Liquid fabric softener
- Exclusively cold washes
- Door and drawer closed between loads
Clearing it
Start with the gasket. Pull the fold back and wipe the whole channel with a cloth and a diluted bleach solution or a washer cleaner, getting into the bottom where the water sits. Remove the detergent drawer completely and scrub it and its housing. Check and clear the drain pump filter, usually behind a small panel at the bottom front, which collects lint, coins and hair and holds a cup of stale water.
Then run the hottest, longest cycle the machine offers, empty, with a washer cleaner or a cup of bleach, and a second time with nothing. If the smell is established, it may take two or three of those. Some machines have a dedicated tub clean cycle, and it exists for exactly this.
Keeping it away
Leave the door open, or at least ajar, and the drawer pulled out, between loads, so the interior dries. Use HE detergent at the low end of the dose. Skip liquid softener, or use dryer sheets or wool balls instead. Run a hot wash regularly, even if it is only a load of towels, and a tub clean cycle monthly. Wipe the gasket dry after the last load of the day if the machine lives in a closet.
That routine takes a few minutes a week and it works. The smell that comes back within days despite it points at a drain problem, a standpipe that lets water back into the machine, or a drum that is not draining, and that is when it becomes a service call rather than a habit.