Washing Machine Blues

Ok… This is one is all on me. It appears I’m a bit of an idiot.

We don’t use fabric softeners… Or rather we don’t any more. We haven’t actually used them for a few years. But we did have a brief lapse when we first got the washing machine we have now. We used it once, maybe twice. Seriously we still have the near full bottle and it now resembles something akin to bad yoghurt. I didn’t even realise fabric softener had a BBE date.

For the past few days I have been wondering where the strange smell has been coming from in our kitchen. Had the cat thrown up? Had something fallen between the cupboards and gone off? No… And No.

I was putting a wash on and I got a whiff of the strange smell. When I opened up the draw I saw, and smelled, this. Ugh. B-(

Not nice. I also need to point out that I have no idea when the last time that draw was even opened. We use liquid detergent you put straight in the tub.
Normally when our machine starts it does a kind of a… Purge? It will blast some water through and then push it out. I though it was to clean the pipes and the bottom of the drum to remove any old water that had been left from last time… Great idea, no? So I naturally thought it would clear out the draw too…. Or something like that. Well, no.

So now I need to learn how to clean the draws of washing machines.

At least I now know where the smell was coming from!