Stinking washing machine

Good suggestions although presumably the citric acid is for scaling and therefore may not be necessary.

If you block all of the advertisements on that site it doesn't grant access!

The missus likes it for some reason. To me, they just smell of vinegar while they're drying. But I don't really know what things like fabric conditioner and hair conditioner are for anyway. I know they make things soft, but that doesn't seem natural to me :-)

hair conditioner makes it sticky & shiny. Sticky helps with hold.

Clothes conditioner does soften towels, why anyone bother I don't know though. It also breeds mould & causes allergies & skin irritation in some people.

NT

Plus some washing machine door seals have a separate drain pipe which can block.

Doesn't fabric conditioner make towels semi water proof and less efficient at doing their intended job?

It also injects a "nice" smell into the clothes - although if given the same in a bottle as perfume of after shave would be consigned to the bin as soon as possible.

Yes. Bizarrely, it also wrecks water-repellent treatments. It's all out to get us!

It stops static building up, especially when you use the big tumble driers in laundrettes.

Towels usually advise against conditioner as it reduces absorbancy.

Avoiding conditioner makes them rough (unless you dry them on a line or in a tumble drier), but exfoliation is supposed to be good for the skin.

I prefer my towels to bend and not be like brillo pads ;)

But yes, I had to stop using normal conditioner for a while as it affected someone's skin in the family.

Then I found "Attitude Fabric Softener" which is brilliant - no problems and it still actually does the job.

That certainly used to be the case but I find many fabric conditioners now have few adverse effects on absorbency.

I've just recently had success in eliminating the mystery odour of "Sweaty, cheesy socks" that our 'under the counter' "Whirlpool" larder fridge had suddenly taken to producing about a week or so back[1] so I can sympathise with your situation.

The mystery of our unwanted odour problem was that it didn't seem to originate from within the chiller cabinet. Nevertheless, it was given a very thorough clean out a few days ago, along with a cleaning of the rear panel heat exchanger, which normally never sees daylight from one decade to the next. We'd actually gone that extra mile to drag it out from its under the worktop home just to track down the source of this now annoying odour (sweaty socks/damp dishcloth smell).

There didn't seem to be a definitive source although I had a suspicion that it may have been the compartmented polyethylene tun dish clipped in place over the compressor can. Since I couldn't figure out how to unclip it (or even if it *could* be unclipped - no owner's manual to hand), we shoved it back under the worktop in the hope that we'd done enough to sort it out.

After another day or two, it became obvious we'd missed something so, the day before yesterday, we (the missus and I), dragged the damn thing out yet again and I took another look at that tun dish. Closer inspection revealed that the two deepest of the interlinked 'ponds' were full of dirty and even dirtier water which I'd rather not have splashed into my face as a result of the dish's sudden release from captivity.

Having eliminated the risk of getting a face full of scummy, bacterially infested water by picking out the tangible bits with long nose pliers and mopping up with a bunch of kitchen paper towelling, I had another go at releasing the dish for a proper cleaning and disinfecting. Out of instinct, I pressed what did prove to be the release catch and it slid out quite easily.

This is rather curiously split into several 'ponds', all interlinked to each other. A little thought as to why it was designed like this suggests that it's simply a clever way to keep the exposed surface area minimised against a varying level of condensate that collects on the cold plate at the rear of the chiller cabinet in order to keep bacterial activity in the tun dish to an absolute minimum.

The condensate itself is distilled water so doesn't directly contribute a risk of bacterial colonisation (unlike the case with a washing machine's drainage setup). However, this nutrient poor water inevitably becomes ever so slightly contaminated en route to the tun dish where it experiences further, if again very low, rates of contamination from atmospheric fall out.

It's obviously an effective way to keep the fridge automatically free of frost build up with a minimum risk of smelly bacterial activity since I can't recall any previous 'Hunting Expeditions' round the back of the fridge for the 'Source of The Stink'. :-)

Having given the dish the thorough cleaning it had so richly deserved (a good scrub with neat bleach then dishwasher liquid followed by a final rinse off and a dose of spray on bleach cleaner), I refitted it and shoved the fridge back under the worktop to await developments.

That was a day and a half ago and I'm happy to report that the horrible odour has now finally disappeared without trace. Hopefully, it won't be too long before you too can enjoy the same sense of satisfaction.

That retrieved slice of watermelon was delicious all the same, regardless of whether or not it had had any part in these events. :-)