So you are about to buy a new washing machine. Well done on choosing to make such an important purchase. Now then, how well are you going to look after it?
It sounds like a very personal question, but what you do with your washing machine after you buy it is a very important factor in how well it performs and how long it lasts. If you read the user guide that comes with it, it will tell you more about this, but you can find out more about why you should pay close attention to cleaning in this very article.
Like any other machine, a washing machine needs to be cleaned every now and again to make sure it continues to work at its best. If you neglect this duty you may run into problems later on. In fact if your machine should stop working or you start getting problems at any point, you might want to clean it first before you call out the engineer.
This is the best thing to do if your washing machine should start smelling a bit bad. This shouldn’t be a problem if you happen to use soap powder, but you might come across it if you prefer using liquid to wash your clothes. As you might guess, the solution to this is to switch to using powder – and a good boil wash using soap powder without any clothes in the machine at all will get it back to normal again in most cases.
You’ll see too that after frequent use your soap drawer will start to look a bit less attractive. Make sure you clean this quite regularly, depending on how often you use the machine. In fact if you can get into the habit of doing so, the best bet is simply to wipe out the drawer after every use. It only takes a few seconds with a couple of sheets of kitchen roll, and it will save you the horrible job of having to take on a major clean after a few months.
You also need to be aware of whether your washing machine has a lint trap. Not all modern models do, but your existing machine may have. As the name suggests it catches all the stray lint that comes off of your clothes while they are being washed. The lint goes into the trap and it should then be regularly cleaned to improve the performance of your washing machine.
If you don’t clean it regularly – or even not at all – you will find that the trap will eventually fill up and become useless. This in turn means all that lint goes back into the machine, sticking to your clothes and becoming very problematic in the process.
So locate that trap and give it a clean. It’s a mucky job and not very pleasant but if you do it regularly with a new machine (if it has one) you shouldn’t have too many problems with it at all.
In short, look after your washing machine and make sure you do all those little cleaning jobs that it requires on a regular basis. If you do, you are far less likely to run into any problems.