Most advice about laundry odors treats the clothes as the problem. Often the clothes are fine and the machine is the source, because a washer is a warm, wet, enclosed box that never fully dries out. A machine left to itself hands a smell to every load you put through it, however carefully you wash.
Telling machine smell from laundry smell
Laundry odors come from two places, and the two have different tells. Separating them saves a great deal of wasted effort.
A neglected machine smells when it is empty. Open the door on one that has been standing and it arrives immediately, sweet and mouldy.
Neglected laundry smells only when it is warm or damp. The shirt is fine in the drawer and sour an hour after it goes on.
Machine smell affects everything equally, including a brand new towel on its first wash. That is the giveaway.
Laundry smell affects specific items: the gym shirts, the towels, the pillowcases, and nothing else.
Run a load of clean rags through with no detergent. If they come out smelling of anything, the machine is the source.
That single test is worth doing before buying anything, because most people react to a smell by changing detergent, and detergent was never the variable.
Weekly
Wipe the door gasket. On a front loading machine this is the most useful thing on the entire list.
Peel the fold back and run a cloth all the way round. Water, hair and detergent collect in there and nothing drains it.
Leave the door ajar between washes. A closed drum stays wet for hours after a cycle ends, and a drum that never dries is where laundry odors take hold.
Wipe the detergent dispenser and the underside of the lid, where residue clings and dries.
Dry the rim and the door glass with the same cloth. The whole thing takes half a minute.
Use a dry cloth rather than a wet one, since the point of the exercise is removing water rather than spreading it around the seal.
Move finished loads out promptly. A wet load standing after the cycle ends puts moisture and body oil straight back into a drum you just dried.
Monthly
Run one hot cycle with an empty drum. Hottest setting, longest wash, nothing inside.
Add either a cup of white vinegar or half a cup of washing soda, never both in the same cycle.
Take the dispenser drawer right out. Most release with a catch inside the housing.
Soak it in hot water and brush the channels, then brush the cavity it slides into, which is usually in worse condition than the drawer.
Check the drain pump filter if the machine has one, normally behind a small panel low at the front. Put a towel down first.
What comes out of that filter explains a great many laundry odors. Coins, hair, lint and a cup of water that has been standing for months.
Wipe around the hinge and the outer edge of the door seal while the cloth is already out.
Twice a year
Pull the machine out from the wall and look behind it.
Check the drain hose. A hose pushed too far down a standpipe siphons, and a siphoning machine leaves water sitting in the drum between washes.
The hose wants a high loop and an air gap rather than a tight seal into the drain.
Clean the floor underneath. Spilled detergent and damp lint collect there, and laundry odors coming from under a machine are easy to blame on the machine itself.
Close the taps and unscrew the inlet hoses. There are small mesh screens inside the valve inlets that almost nobody has ever looked at.
A restricted inlet screen means a short fill, and a short fill rinses badly, which puts residue back into the fabric.
Look over the hoses for bulges or rust at the crimp while they are off, since a failed hose does far more damage than any smell. Set a calendar reminder rather than trusting memory, because twice a year is easy to intend and easy to skip for three years running.
Where laundry odors live inside a machine
The film that builds inside a machine is a mixture of detergent residue, body oil and fabric softener.
It sits under the drum lip, in the gasket fold, inside the dispenser and along the drain path.
Cold washing and heavy softener use both speed it up. Cold never gets warm enough to break the film down, and softener is waxy by design.
Once the film exists it releases a little into every wash, which is why laundry odors reappear a day after a load came out smelling perfectly fine.
No amount of detergent in the load fixes it, because the load is not where it lives.
The repair is heat and a clean surface, which is the whole point of the routine above.
Choices that make the routine easier
Use less detergent. Overdosing is the most common cause of residue, and residue is what feeds the film.
Cut back on liquid softener or drop it entirely. It coats everything it touches, including the drum and the dispenser, and it is a reliable contributor to laundry odors over a couple of years.
Run at least one hot wash a week somewhere in the rotation rather than washing everything cold.
Use powdered detergent occasionally. It generally leaves less residue behind than liquid does.
Do not load a wet basket into a wet drum. Give the machine ten minutes open first.
Shake towels out before they go in, since a towel load leaves more lint in the drum than anything else.
Top loaders and front loaders differ
The routine is the same for both. The trouble spots are not.
Front loaders have the door gasket, and the fold in that gasket holds standing water. It is the leading source of smell in any front loading machine.
They also run on low water volume, which is efficient and gives residue rather less to wash away.
Top loaders with a centre agitator collect film under the agitator column and around the ring at the top of the tub.
High efficiency top loaders without an agitator use low water levels too, and they develop the same residue problem as a front loader.
Older deep fill top loaders rinse generously and smell least, and they still collect film under the rim where nobody looks.
Whichever machine you have, the weekly wipe is the item that carries the routine. Skip the monthly and the yearly for a while and a wiped, aired machine will still behave.
The Phoenix part
Hard water is the local factor, and it puts every item on this routine on a much shorter clock.
Water here carries a heavy mineral load, and those minerals come out of solution wherever the water is heated or left standing. That means scale on the heating element, scale along the drain path, and a chalky deposit around the gasket and under the drum lip.
Scale is not a smooth surface. A scaled surface has far more area than a clean one and gives residue somewhere to grip, so the film builds faster than it would in soft water and laundry odors arrive sooner.
Minerals also bind detergent. Part of every dose is spent softening the water instead of cleaning, which is why people here overdose, and overdosing leaves the residue that feeds the film. Washing soda in the wash deals with hardness without adding more detergent.
The inlet valve screens are the twice yearly item that matters most in this area, because scale blocks them first. A partly blocked screen gives a short fill, and a short fill rinses poorly.
The monthly empty hot cycle earns its place for the same reason. Vinegar cuts mineral deposit and washing soda handles the hardness itself, so alternating the two month by month covers both problems.
Where a full fill still happens
A routine keeps a machine clean, and a clean machine still needs water enough to rinse a load right through.
The machines at our self-service laundry on North 16th Street fill with a large volume of water and carry a full rinse through to the end, so mineral deposit and detergent residue leave with the water instead of drying into the fabric.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
A washer is a warm wet box that never dries out, and a neglected one hands its laundry odors to every load that passes through. Weekly, wipe the gasket fold, wipe the dispenser, dry the rim and leave the door ajar. Monthly, run an empty hot cycle with vinegar or washing soda, pull the dispenser drawer and scrub its cavity, and check the drain pump filter. Twice a year, look behind the machine, check the drain hose for siphoning, clean underneath, and clear the mesh screens in the water inlet valves. Machine smell shows on everything equally, including a new towel, while laundry smell shows only on certain items.
WaveMAX Phoenix on North 16th is at 2825 N 16th St Suite 1, easy to reach from Phoenix and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 602-314-5706.