After water gets into a house, laundry is not the first thing anyone thinks about. It becomes urgent quickly, though, because wet textiles in a warm room start growing within a day or two, and by the time something smells the decision has usually already been made for you.
Houston sits in a part of the country where this is a recurring possibility rather than a freak event, and the useful thing is knowing in advance what can be saved, what cannot, and what the order of operations is.
First, sort by what the water was
This is the decision everything else depends on, and it is not about how wet something got.
Clean water. A burst supply line, rain through a window, an overflowing tub. Textiles here are usually recoverable if you get to them quickly.
Grey water. Washing machine or dishwasher overflow, a leaking appliance. Recoverable in most cases with a hot wash, and worth being more selective about what you keep.
Black water. Anything from a storm surge, a bayou, street flooding, or a sewer backup. This category carries sewage and whatever else the water crossed on the way to your house.
For black water, the guidance from public health agencies is consistent and worth taking seriously: porous items that absorbed it should be discarded rather than laundered. That means mattresses, pillows, upholstered furniture, and carpet padding, and it generally includes stuffed toys and anything you cannot wash in hot water.
Clothing and linens in that category sit in a grey area. Sturdy cottons washed hot are frequently kept. Anything that cannot take hot water, or that a vulnerable person will sleep against, is not worth the risk. Nobody enjoys this decision and it is better made deliberately than after the fact.
The first day matters more than the technique
Growth on damp fabric begins in roughly 24 to 48 hours in a warm room, and the Houston version of a warm room after a storm is often a house with no power.
So the priority on day one is not washing. It is drying and separating.
Get wet textiles out of the pile. A heap holds heat and moisture in the middle and that is where it starts.
Hang them separated, outdoors if the weather allows, with as much air movement as you can manage. A fan on a pile of damp laundry does more good in the first day than anything else available to you.
Bag the discards separately and get them out of the house so the spores are not circulating while you work on the rest.
If you cannot wash for several days, drying them fully is the holding pattern. Dry fabric does not grow anything. Damp fabric in a bin does.
Washing what you are keeping
Work in small loads. Silt and grit need water volume to leave with, and a packed machine just redistributes it.
Shake and rinse outside first. Get the mud off before anything goes near a machine. Silt is the thing that clogs a drain pump.
Wash separately from everything else in the house, and keep flood textiles apart from ordinary laundry entirely.
Use the hottest water the fabric allows. Heat matters here more than for any other kind of load.
Add oxygen bleach rather than chlorine bleach for most items. It works on organic staining and growth and is safe on colors and on rubber machine parts. Chlorine bleach is appropriate for sturdy whites only.
Expect to wash more than once. Two or three cycles is normal and the second one is usually where the smell finally goes.
Do not dry anything that still smells. Heat sets odor into fiber. Wash again first. This is the single most common mistake and it is the one that turns a recoverable item into a discard.
Then clean the machine. Run an empty hot cycle, wipe the drum and the door seal, and clear the drain pump filter, which will have caught silt.
What to do before the next one
Cheap, and worth doing while nothing is happening.
Keep bedding and off-season clothing off the floor and out of ground-level storage. Plastic bins with sealing lids rather than cardboard.
Know where your machine’s drain pump filter is and how to open it now, rather than working it out with a flashlight later.
Keep one set of bedding and a few days of clothing somewhere high and sealed. Being able to make a bed on the first night matters more than it sounds like it would.
When your own machine is not an option
Often the machine is exactly what you cannot use. It may have been underwater, the power may be out, or the volume may simply be more than one household unit can work through.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Fulton Street let you run several loads at once and reach higher wash temperatures than most household units, which is the variable that matters most on this kind of load. The drum size also handles bedding and blankets that a home machine cannot.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily. To be straightforward about what that does and does not mean: it means the machine you use is not carrying the last load’s residue. It does not mean a laundry cycle makes floodwater-contaminated items safe. The sorting decision above is the one that determines that, and it happens before anything reaches a machine.
Nou wash-dry-fold service is there for ordinary laundry when a household has more urgent things to deal with.
The short version
Sort by what the water was, not by how wet things got. Porous items touched by storm or sewer water should be discarded rather than washed, and that includes mattresses, pillows, and upholstery. Growth starts in 24 to 48 hours, so day one is about separating and drying rather than washing. Wash in small loads, shake the silt off outside first, use the hottest water the fabric allows and oxygen bleach, and expect two or three cycles. Never put something in the dryer while it still smells, because heat sets the odor permanently. Then clean the machine and clear the pump filter.
WaveMAX Houston is at 2611 Fulton Street, easy to reach from the Near Northside and the surrounding neighborhoods. If you have more laundry than your machine can handle, call us at 713-485-4726.