anyway the reason I encountered this guy was because recently, the household washer has been leaving these gross little oily brown flakes on anything washed in it. this is kind of a big problem for me, given that I not only have (literal, diagnosed, medicated) OCD which includes a contagion phobia, I also sew a bunch of stuff with the intent of gifting or selling it, and sometimes that involves prewashing fabric. only, you know, washing is supposed to make things cleaner, not dirtier.
and my research brought me to (gross photos warning!) Kismai's post on the very topic. apparently this stuff is called "scrud," and it's basically a residue that forms over time inside the nooks and crannies of a washing machine - leftover detergent reacting with mineral traces in tapwater to form a buildup that also traps dyes, grease, and other dirt, which bacteria then feeds on, because it wasn't already gross enough. it forms faster if you have hard water, use too much detergent (which most people do), use fabric softener, wash only on cold and the list goes on and on - point is, scrud is the reason that you have to actually clean your washing machine, or be super fastidious about how you do laundry.
(I'll take "things I wish school/my parents actually taught me" for 800)
so now I am engaged in a lengthy battle against scrud, armed with a tub of oxiclean and a sack of citric acid crystals. (we're renters, so disassembling the machine is out of the question.) pour in a scoop of oxiclean, run a machine clean cycle, pour in a scoop of citric acid, run another machine clean cycle, all while wiping piles and piles of scrud out of the drum at the end of each cycle. I'm on the eighth cycle now. there's still so much scrud. the reddit record for "how many cleaning cycles were needed to get a machine entirely free of scrud" is 22 cycles. help
