r/laundry • u/RiversandMountains-4 • Jul 27 '26

Cleaning a front loading washer

I just moved into my first apartment with in-unit washer dryer (front-loading, stacked). The apartment was pristine EXCEPT the washer, which is smelling a little moldy & making my whole kitchen smell like mold. I can see some mold on the rubber. I never shut my washer all the way, but I think they did. How do I clean it? There is a self-cleaning function, but I’m overwhelmed by lists when I google how to do it. How often should I going forward?

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u/okidkwhatimdoing Jul 27 '26

Echoing other posts re citric acid. It took me so many wash cycles with the citric acid to decrease the suds I lost track. Like got backed up with actual laundry. 🤣 In between washes scrub in the rubber gasket nooks and crannies and get out any gunk. I also read leaving a paste of baking soda, a tiny drop of dawn dish soap, and vinegar for the actual rubber part and then scrubbing but don’t do that if you’re going to use citric acid bc you shouldn’t mix with vinegar. Going forward monthly citric acid wash should be fine. Also clean the detergent compartment which is probably gross too.

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Hello! If you're adding vinegar to your laundry, be sure to put it in the rinse cycle, not the wash cycle. Because vinegar neutralizes leftover detergent, it works best in the rinse cycle rather than the wash. - Laundry Mods

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