How to Clean a Washing Machine (Front Loader vs Top Loader)

If your washing machine smells, the drum is almost never the problem. The smell lives in four places you can’t see from the doorway: the folds of the door gasket, the detergent dispenser housing, the drain pump filter, and the gap between the inner drum and the outer tub where residue collects and never fully drains. Running a hot empty cycle scrubs the one surface that was already clean and leaves the other four untouched, which is why the smell comes back within a fortnight.

Front loaders and top loaders fail in genuinely different ways, so the procedure differs. A front loader traps water in a horizontal rubber bellow that was designed to hold water in — that’s its job — and it will grow a biofilm there whatever detergent you use. A top loader has no bellow to speak of, but it has a deeper outer tub, a dispenser tower, and in agitator models a fabric softener cup that turns into a solid plug. Below is the full sequence for both, with the timings you should actually budget and the specific things that will damage the machine or void the warranty if you get them wrong.

Why washing machines smell in the first place

The smell is bacterial biofilm — a soft, greyish, slightly greasy layer that grows on anything permanently damp and fed. What feeds it is undissolved detergent, fabric softener, and body oils from the wash. Three habits create it almost every time:

• Too much detergent. HE machines use a fraction of the water older machines did. The dose that “looks right” is usually two or three times what the machine can rinse away, and the surplus stays behind as a sticky film.
• Liquid fabric softener. It works by depositing a waxy cationic coating on fibres. It coats the inside of the machine and the dispenser channels the same way, and that coating is food.
• Cold washes only. Modern detergents work cold, which is good for your clothes and your bill, but nothing in the machine ever gets hot enough to knock the biofilm back.

Add a door that gets shut on a damp drum and you have a warm, dark, fed, humid box. That is not a defect. That is a washing machine being used normally.

Front loader vs top loader: what actually differs

Know which machine you have before you start, because two of the steps below only exist on one of them.

Front loader (horizontal axis)

The critical part is the door gasket, also called the bellow — the thick rubber ring between the door and the drum. It has at least one deep fold running around its lower half, and that fold holds a standing puddle after every wash, along with hair, coins, tissue and grit. This is the number one source of the smell. Front loaders also nearly all have a drain pump filter behind a small hatch at the bottom front of the cabinet.

Top loader (vertical axis)

No bellow, so no fold to clean, but the water sits deeper and drains less completely. Two sub-types matter:

• Agitator models — the tall central post. The fabric softener dispenser cup at the top of the agitator is a classic failure point; softener sets in it like candle wax. On many models that cup lifts off for soaking.
• HE impeller models — a low disc or plate instead of a post. Less mechanical action, lower water level, and a stronger tendency toward residue on the drum wall and under the plastic rim.

Most top loaders have no user-serviceable drain filter. Do not go hunting for one and do not remove panels looking for it — if drainage is slow on a top loader that is a service call, not a cleaning job.

What you need before you start

• A washing machine cleaner tablet or sachet approved for your machine, or liquid chlorine bleach — one or the other, never both
• Two or three clean microfibre cloths, plus a couple you don’t mind ruining
• An old toothbrush or a soft detail brush
• A shallow tray or baking dish and an old towel (for the drain filter)
• Washing-up liquid and hot water for the dispenser drawer
• Gloves

Cloth choice matters more here than people expect. The gasket fold is a narrow channel and a cotton rag just pushes the sludge deeper into it, where you then can’t reach it; a folded microfibre with some structure to it drags the residue out. If you’re buying, see why professional cleaners buy microfibre by the case — it’s the same reason a decent cloth clears a gasket in one pass and a supermarket rag takes four.

How to clean a front loader: the full procedure

Budget roughly 40–50 minutes of hands-on work, plus one cleaning cycle that will run somewhere between 1 and 2 hours depending on the model. Do it in this order — the cycle goes last, so it flushes away everything you loosened.

1. Empty the machine and open the door fully (1 minute). Never run a cleaning cycle with laundry inside. Bleach or cleaner at cleaning-cycle concentration will damage fabric.
2. Pull back the gasket fold and clear the debris (10–15 minutes). With gloved fingers, gently roll the rubber lip back toward you and work all the way around the ring. Expect standing water, hair, grit, sometimes coins and hair grips. Wipe the whole channel with a damp cloth, then go around a second time with the detail brush on the ribbed sections where the film clings. If there are black spots, keep working the area rather than reaching for anything stronger — see the warning below.
3. Wipe the glass and the door rim (3 minutes). The inner face of the door and the metal or plastic rim it seals against carry the same film. Dry both.
4. Remove and soak the dispenser drawer (15 minutes, mostly unattended). Most front-loader drawers come out — usually by pulling them fully open and pressing a release tab or the coloured insert in the softener compartment. Soak in hot water with a squeeze of washing-up liquid for ten minutes while you do the next step, then brush out the siphon insert. That little plastic cap in the softener chamber is where the wax plug forms.
5. Clean the drawer housing (5 minutes). With the drawer out, look up into the empty cavity with a torch. There is almost always a build-up on the roof of the housing where water jets in. Reach in with a cloth wrapped over the brush handle and wipe what you can reach. Refit the drawer.
6. Clean the drain pump filter (15–20 minutes). Full method in its own section below. Do this before the cleaning cycle, not after.
7. Run the cleaning cycle (1–2 hours on most Western machines, unattended). Use the Clean Washer, Tub Clean or Drum Clean cycle if your machine has one. Put a washer-cleaner tablet in the empty drum, not in the dispenser drawer — the drawer will not dissolve it properly. Add no detergent and nothing else. If you are using liquid chlorine bleach instead of a tablet, Whirlpool and Maytag specify 1 cup (236 mL) in the bleach compartment, warn that more than that can damage the washer over time, and specifically tell you not to use thickened, easy-pour or no-splash bleach for this — those formulations produce excess suds. Maytag also instructs you to leave the door open afterwards. If your machine has no clean cycle, run the longest, hottest cycle available, empty.
8. Wipe the gasket dry and leave the door ajar (2 minutes). This last step is the one that decides whether you’re doing this again next month.

One note on that cycle time, because it trips people up. “One to two hours” is a European and North American expectation. Panasonic’s Japanese drum washers document their sō-senjō (tub clean) course at about 6 hours or about 11 hours depending on the model, because it works by soaking the drum in cleaner at ambient temperature rather than heating it. Panasonic added a heated “approximately 30 °C tub clean” course specifically to bring that down to about 3 hours (about 6 hours on some models) at equivalent effect. If your machine’s clean cycle shows a time that looks absurd, it is almost certainly a soak, and cancelling it halfway wastes the entire run.

What the bellow is made of, and what actually destroys it

Almost every front-loader door bellow is moulded from EPDM — ethylene propylene diene monomer rubber. The material is chosen because it stays elastic in permanent contact with detergent and fabric-softener solutions at wash temperatures up to 95 °C, which is hotter than any programme in a domestic machine will ever run. That is a demanding specification, and it explains why the part lasts a decade in a wet, hot, soapy environment that would wreck most rubbers.

Published elastomer compatibility data for EPDM is worth knowing before you pour anything into that fold. EPDM is rated resistant to water and steam, to caustic alkaline solutions, to alcohols, and to dilute acids — including acetic acid at 5%, which is the strength of ordinary household vinegar. What the same charts rate as only limited resistance are two things people are routinely told to use on a blackened gasket: sodium hypochlorite, i.e. liquid chlorine bleach, and oils and petroleum-based solvents, which is what a “rubber conditioner” or a solvent wipe usually is. In other words, the internet’s two favourite gasket treatments — neat bleach left to soak, and an oily dressing to “feed” the rubber — are the two chemistries the material likes least.

This does not license you to pour vinegar into the machine. The manufacturers’ objections to acid, set out further down, are mostly about the parts that are not EPDM — the heating element, the chrome and copper, the silicone. It does mean that if you are working on the bellow itself, hot water, a mild detergent and mechanical effort with a brush and a structured cloth are the correct answer, and that reaching for something aggressive is a poor trade. The trade literature on these mouldings makes the point bluntly: EPDM has high tear resistance, but a nail, a screw or a hairpin coming through in a pocket will destroy one, and that — not chemistry — is the realistic way a bellow dies.

On black staining specifically: mould on a bellow colonises the surface of the rubber rather than sitting on top of it, so a thorough clean reliably stops the smell and stops it spreading, and does not reliably restore the colour. A stained but intact bellow is cosmetic. A cracked, perished or punctured one leaks onto your floor.

How to clean a top loader

Budget 25–35 minutes hands-on plus the cycle. Fewer steps, but two of them are specific to top loaders.

1. Empty the drum and check under the rim (5 minutes). Run your fingers around the underside of the plastic ring at the top of the tub. On HE impeller models this is where residue sits, out of the water line and out of sight. Wipe it with a damp microfibre.
2. Lift out the fabric softener cup, if you have an agitator (10–15 minutes, mostly soaking). On many agitator machines the softener dispenser is a removable cup at the top of the post. Soak it in hot water with washing-up liquid until the waxy plug softens, then brush it clear. If it does not lift off, don’t force it — check the manual for your model number first.
3. Wipe the lid, the lid seal and the top rim (5 minutes). Condensation collects on the underside of the lid and drips back in.
4. Run the Tub Clean / Clean Washer cycle (1–2 hours, unattended). Cleaner tablet dropped straight into the empty tub — Whirlpool and Maytag both say put the tablet in the basket, never in the detergent dispenser — or 1 cup (236 mL) of liquid chlorine bleach in the bleach compartment. No detergent, no laundry, nothing else in with it. Maytag’s instruction is to run this cycle every month, and many top loaders carry a Clean Washer indicator light as a periodic reminder. That light is a maintenance prompt, not a fault code.
5. Dry the rim and prop the lid open (2 minutes).

If your top loader smells specifically of stagnant water and it drains slowly, stop cleaning and book a service visit. Most top loaders have no filter you can reach, and slow draining points at the pump or the drain hose, neither of which is a cleaning problem.

The drain pump filter: the part most people have never opened

On a front loader this is behind a small hatch or a drop-down panel at the bottom front of the cabinet, often sharing a compartment with a short black drain hose. Manufacturers generally advise clearing it every few months. It catches lint, hair, coins, buttons, and the occasional sock, and when it clogs the machine drains slowly, leaves clothes soaked, or throws a drain error.

1. Unplug the machine. Not optional. You are working at floor level with water.
2. Lay down an old towel and set a shallow tray against the cabinet. There is more water in there than the tray looks like it can hold — plan to empty it two or three times.
3. Release the small black drain hose from its clip, pull the plug and let it run into the tray. If the machine has just finished a hot wash, that water will be hot. Let it cool first.
4. Turn the filter counter-clockwise and withdraw it. Expect more water as it comes free.
5. Pull the lint out by hand, then rinse the filter under the tap and brush the mesh clear. Check the cavity it came out of too — reach in and feel for anything solid, carefully.
6. Refit the filter clockwise until it stops. It must go fully home or it will leak. Re-plug the hose, clip it back, close the hatch.

Budget 15–20 minutes the first time, less afterwards.

How often, according to the people who built the machine

“Every few months” is what most English-language cleaning content says. It is roughly what Whirlpool says. It is nothing like what the Japanese manufacturers say, and the gap is wide enough that it is worth knowing which camp your machine came from.

• Panasonic (drum washers) — the drain filter should be checked and cleaned about once a week. Panasonic’s own maintenance page states the interval as a guideline (目安：週に1回) and tells owners to do it on schedule even when nothing has collected, on the reasoning that a filter you only open when you notice a problem is one you open after drainage has already degraded.
• Hitachi (drum washers) — the machine raises a lint-filter prompt on the display every 15 cycles, and sooner if the dryer function is used heavily. Two details in Hitachi’s published procedure are worth stealing whatever brand you own: run a one-minute spin-only cycle first so there is less water waiting behind the hatch, and wipe out the recess the filter seats into, not just the filter. Hitachi also tells owners to confirm the filter’s own rubber gasket is intact and to avoid rubbing it, because its lubricant film is part of the seal.
• LG — monthly. LG’s support documentation names what it expects to find: lost buttons, loose change and lint.
• Whirlpool — every few months or as needed, depending on how much lint and debris the household generates.

The honest synthesis is that weekly is the standard for a machine run daily, monthly is the sensible floor for an ordinary household, and “every few months” is the point at which you are gambling on nothing solid having got past the drum. The contents list barely varies between brands: lint, hair, coins, buttons, hair grips, and small items that escape pockets. What varies is how long they have been sitting in standing water before you find them, which is the entire reason a neglected filter smells.

What you should never put in a washing machine

If your manual does permit citric acid, there is a second argument you should know about, because it decides the temperature you run it at. Citric acid dissolves limescale by converting calcium carbonate to calcium citrate — and calcium citrate is itself poorly soluble. German consumer guidance, including advice from Tristan Jorde of Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg reported by ZDF, warns that at raised temperatures the citrate can come out of solution and deposit inside the machine rather than flushing away, and the ceiling commonly quoted in German household advice is around 40 °C. Descaler manufacturers dispute it: HEITMANN, which sells citric-acid descalers, argues on its own FAQ that household concentrations never get high enough for the effect to matter and that hot descaling works faster. The point is not that one side has won. The point is that the disagreement exists, and that the cautious reading costs you nothing — if you descale with citric acid, run it warm rather than hot.

• More bleach than specified. Whirlpool and Maytag both specify 1 cup (236 mL) of liquid chlorine bleach for a clean-washer cycle and state that using more than that can cause washer damage over time. More is not better.
• Thickened, easy-pour or no-splash bleach. Maytag names these specifically and tells you not to use them for a clean-washer cycle, because they generate excess suds.
• Bleach left to soak on the bellow. EPDM is only rated as having limited resistance to sodium hypochlorite. A dosed cleaning cycle is one thing; a bleach-soaked pad parked in the gasket fold for an hour is another.
• Oily or solvent-based “rubber conditioners” on the gasket. Same reason — EPDM’s weak point is oils and petroleum solvents, not water.
• Bleach and a washer cleaner in the same cycle. Use one or the other.
• Detergent during a cleaning cycle. It defeats the point — the cycle is there to rinse detergent residue out, not add more.
• Abrasive pads or cream cleaner on the drum or bellow. Scratched stainless steel holds residue better than smooth stainless steel, and abrasives will chew the rubber.
• Anything sharp near the bellow. Worth saying twice.

Keeping it from coming back

The cleaning is the easy part; the maintenance is what saves you repeating it.

• Leave the door and the dispenser drawer ajar between washes. The single highest-value habit for a front loader. If pets or small children make an open door impractical, wipe the gasket dry after the last wash of the day instead.
• Wipe the gasket fold dry once a week. Thirty seconds with a dry cloth. This alone prevents most of what you just spent an hour removing.
• Cut your detergent dose. Measure it rather than pouring by eye, and if you use pods, one is one — not one and a half for a full load.
• Drop the liquid fabric softener, or move to wool dryer balls. This is the fastest fix for a machine that smells again a month after cleaning.
• Run one hot wash a week — towels or bedding at the highest temperature the fabric allows.
• Take laundry out promptly. A wet load left overnight re-seeds the drum with everything you removed.
• Run the cleaning cycle monthly, or whenever the Clean Washer light comes on. Clear the drain pump filter every few months.

There is published evidence behind the two dullest items on that list

The open door and the weekly hot wash sound like folklore. They are not. In 2019 a team from the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health at University Hospital Bonn investigated repeated colonisation of newborns in a German neonatal unit after conventional hygiene measures failed. They traced it to a single domestic-type washing machine in the basement, used to launder knitted hats and socks for the ward. The multidrug-resistant Klebsiella oxytoca involved was recovered from two places in that machine: the detergent drawer and the door seal. When the machine was removed, the colonisations stopped. The work was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (DOI 10.1128/AEM.01435-19).

Two things follow for an ordinary household, neither of them alarming. First, the two sites that held the organism are precisely the two sites a hot empty drum cycle never reaches — which is the whole argument for the drawer and gasket steps earlier in this article, and the reason a “clean cycle” on its own keeps failing people. Second, the researchers’ own conclusion was about temperature: domestic machines are increasingly run below 60 °C to save energy, which is fine for ordinary laundry, and they recommended higher wash temperatures where a household includes someone with open wounds, catheters or an infected injury. That is not a reason to stop washing cold. It is a reason for the weekly hot wash on towels and bedding to be a real habit rather than a good intention — and a reason to treat the drawer and the seal, not the drum, as the parts that actually need your attention.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I clean my washing machine?

Run the cleaning cycle monthly — that is Maytag’s own instruction — or when the Clean Washer light appears. Wipe a front-loader gasket dry weekly. For the drain pump filter, go by your brand: Panasonic says weekly on its drum washers, Hitachi prompts every 15 cycles, LG says monthly, Whirlpool says every few months. Monthly is a defensible floor for a typical household, and sooner if you wash pet bedding, sports kit, or anything that sheds heavily.

The black marks on my door gasket won’t come off. Is it ruined?

Sometimes, yes. Persistent black staining on the rubber is usually mould that has grown into the surface of the bellow rather than sitting on it, and once it has done that it is a cosmetic stain you can’t scrub out. Cleaning will stop it spreading and stop the smell; it will not always restore the colour. A stained-but-intact bellow is not a safety problem. A torn one is.

Can I use vinegar to clean my washing machine?

Check your manual, because the brands genuinely differ. Bosch advises against both vinegar and citric acid, citing damage to rubber parts. Miele says correct detergent dosing makes descaling unnecessary, and that where it is unavoidable you should use a descaler with corrosion protection; its own is citric-acid based. Siemens says use a descaler it has approved, every three to six months. Note also that the bellow rubber itself, EPDM, is rated resistant to acetic acid at household strength — which sits awkwardly beside Bosch’s stated objection that vinegar and citric acid are "sehr aggressiv" toward the machine’s rubber parts. The likeliest reconciliation is that the concern is not the door bellow specifically but everything else an acid reaches once it is circulating: the other seals, the hose connections and the metal components, where dwell time and temperature do the damage. Occasional diluted use is a different proposition from a cup of vinegar every wash, which is where reported seal and hose damage comes from. Never use it in or near a cycle that involves bleach.

Why does my washing machine still smell after a hot cycle?

Because a hot cycle only touches the drum. If you have not cleared the gasket fold, the dispenser drawer and housing, and the drain pump filter, the source of the smell is still sitting in the machine, wet, ready to repopulate the drum on the next wash. Do all four locations and the difference is immediate.

My top loader has no drain filter. Where is it?

Most top loaders genuinely don’t have a user-accessible one — the pump is designed to pass small debris. Don’t remove cabinet panels looking for it. If the machine drains slowly or leaves clothes soaked, that is a pump or drain hose issue and it needs a technician.

Does cleaning my washing machine void the warranty?

Routine cleaning as described in your manual is expected maintenance and does not affect the warranty — skipping it is more likely to cost you a claim. What does cause trouble is damage you inflict: a punctured or torn bellow, a scratched drum, corroded components from overdosing bleach, or acid damage to seals where the manual told you not to use acids. Mould on a gasket is almost universally treated as a maintenance issue rather than a covered defect, which is why the weekly wipe matters.