Pull Back The Rubber Seal On Your Washing Machine And Look (Most People Never Have)

Go and open your washing machine. Put a finger into the fold of the rubber seal around the door, the part that is normally hidden, and pull it back. Most people have never once looked in there. What is usually sitting in that fold is not a stain, it is build up, and it can be shockingly thick. Your clothes have been washing in it. MY BOOK: The Spotless Method, the whole system written down in the order I'd actually do it. spotlessmethod.com This is the third one in a row. The filter above your stove, then the one in your dishwasher, and now the machine that washes everything you own. Three appliances where the part that needed regular attention was hidden, and nobody ever mentioned it. WHAT I WILL NOT HAVE YOU DOING: the video I learned this from is a repair technician who takes the front panel off the machine and removes the entire door seal. I am a housekeeper, not an appliance engineer, and I am not sending anyone over sixty into the front of a washing machine. Everything here is done with the machine fully assembled. What's inside: • Why mold grows in four places at once, the seal, the drawer, the drum, and the hoses you cannot see • Cleaning the seal fold in place, without taking anything apart • The soap drawer, which usually pulls straight out • THE DRAIN PUMP FILTER behind the little panel at the bottom front, the one I promised you • The monthly hot wash with old rags, and why an empty drum does not clean itself • The thirty second habit after every single wash that prevents nearly all of it ⚠️ THE STANDING WATER WARNING, because nobody gives it. Behind that little bottom panel there is water sitting, often more than you expect, and it comes out the second the cap turns. Before you touch it, put a shallow baking tray underneath and lay old towels flat across the floor in front of the machine. Turn the cap slowly. Some machines have a small drain hose tucked in beside the filter, and if yours does, use that first into a bowl and you will save most of the mess. ⚠️ AND THE ONE I WILL NOT BEND ON: a lot of popular advice tells you to run vinegar through your machine. Other advice tells you to use bleach. Pick ONE. Never both, and never one after the other in the same session. Acid and bleach together make a poison gas, and a laundry room is a small space. If you have used vinegar, run a full empty rinse and let the machine dry before bleach goes anywhere near it. Also honest: bleach discolors rubber and hardens a seal over time, so it is a rescue for a badly blackened one, not a routine. Weekly upkeep is warm soapy water and a dry cloth, nothing stronger. THE GOOD NEWS, for once. I have had to tell you before that mold in porous grout has roots that nothing sprayed on the surface will reach. A door seal is rubber, and rubber is not porous. So here, cleaning it off and then keeping it dry genuinely works. This one you can win. AND THE PART THAT WASN'T YOUR FAULT: we were all told to wash cold. It is good advice, it saves money and it is gentler on clothes, and I am not against it. But nobody mentioned the other half, that a cold wash does not kill what a hot one does, and a machine shut damp afterward is a warm dark wet box, which is exactly what mold needs. In forty years I never once smelled a hotel machine, and that was not luck. Commercial laundry runs genuinely hot, and those machines were left open. SAFETY: the filter is at floor level, so sit on a low sturdy stool rather than kneeling, and never kneel on a wet floor, which is what that floor is about to be. Towels down first, and mop it dry straight away. Never try to move or tilt a washing machine, they are extremely heavy. If getting down to floor level is hard for you, this is a delegate job, and show whoever helps you the tray and towels first, because that is the part they will skip. I read every comment. Go pull that seal back right now and tell me honestly what you found in there. And tell me whether you have ever opened the little panel at the bottom, because I suspect a great many of you did not know it was there. New videos every week on keeping a lovely home after 60, gently, and in the right order.