this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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me_irl
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I remember when I was in my early 20s in my first apartment, they were doing work on the gas lines and a maintenance person had to come in and reset the pilot light on the water heater and lightly chastised me for having a bunch of stuff stored to either side of it in its little closet due to safety concerns. I was too embarrassed to admit it but I had concluded that was just some metal junk someone had left taking up space in my closet, no idea it was the thing making my hot water work. I had even discussed this with my girlfriend at the time, who also came to the same conclusion about it, just some large metal junk inexplicably taking up most of the space of a small apartment closet.
Man, it's like when I found out you have to clean your dishwasher, washing machine, and garbage disposal.
"You mean they don't always smell bad?"
wait, you're supposed to clean your washing machine??
HOW??
there is a small flap near the bottom of the machine. Modern machines just a a slit that is minimally wider where you can insert a screwdriver to open it. Sometimes the mechanism is different.
Behind the screws and lids and stuff is a sieve you need to clean. If you see a tube on the side before reaching the sieve, open it firstand let the water run out (careful, can be quite a bit of water) If you have a toploader the cover and sieve is sometimes on top to the side.
You can check your manual if you don't find it or are unsure how to open.
Sometimes socks, jewelry or other stuff gets trapped in there and can not be chemically cleaned away.
Look i just found out this year too, don't panic. Go to the grocery store, find a thing called "affresh". It does the job.
It's basically a powder acid. Anything that gets water on it has some buildup and sometimes mold n stuff that gets left around and the acid stuff eats it away.
I'm pretty sure you can use vinegar to do it too.
Yes you could use vinegar, but please don't. Long term gunks up sieves and small tubes.
Please use citric acid or the aforementioned products (sometimes just called machine cleaner)