Sour smelling laundry...

[MrX]

There may be bacteria present in the fabric that isn't being removed by the usual wash cycle and detergent.

This can happen if clothes are allowed to go sour. Then the bacteria keeps regrowing when they're wet.

Wash them with a fabric safe disinfectant such as Dettol laundry sanitiser or the scented varieties of dettol.

Also consider changing to a powder detergent for a few washes. (a top of the line version... The budget versions often lack some of the more sophisticated ingredients)

Run your machine at 40°C rather than cold. Honestly, you're not saving very much energy on cold washes.

Then make sure the clothes are fully dry and aired out. Any dampness can cause this problem.

What detergent are you using?
I'm sure our Aussi posters could advise on the most effective options.[this post was last edited: 10/28/2013-17:48]

 

[ronhic]

MRX

How on earth did you conclude that I used liquids and washed in cold water?

- I use OMO powder, which is our 'Persil'...in fact the same product is badged Persil in NZ.
- I NEVER use liquids
- I NEVER use fabric conditioners
- Washing is always hung up or tumble dried promptly
- I do NOT COLD WASH
- It is RARE that I wash at 30c
- MAJORITY of washing is done at 40c
- At LEAST one load a week at 60c

 

[ronhic]

Nathan

It's indiscriminate.

It can appear in anything from heavy track material to close woven trousers to business shirts.

I'm ringing Levers today to see what they say.

 

[ronhic]

...and they said nothing of particular consequence.

However, they did elude to there being:

'known issues with the mix of enzymes in their powder that could cause residual odour'

I've to send them a sample when they send my refund.[this post was last edited: 10/28/2013-23:35]

 

[stan]

Chris

You'll figure out what the cause is! And how to solve the problem. When you do let us know what worked!
You might wash a few things by hand... Just to make sure the machine is the problem.

 

[iheartmaytag]

Water was just a suggestion.

Hope you find your problem.

 

[rapunzel]

I'd definitely go with the cloudy ammonia suggestion. If that doesn't help then maybe the fabric is tainted beyond fix. Put on a nice colone with your sweat shirt and the sour smell will not be so obvious.

 

[petek]

We have an older GE Filter Flo... .wonderful machine. For the longest time whenever my partner did his laundry the residual smell after going thru the dryer was foul. Sweaty jockstraps smell better.. and this was his day to day clothing. My wash however smelled wonderful, no smell at all because I dno't use fabric softeners or smelly detergents. It was all because he overloaded the machine so much there wasn't much room for any water. So either you maybe overloading your machine or it's water sensor isn't putting in enough ?

 

[ronhic]

Harley

...and a perfectly valid one too.

 

[MrX]

Well, the 'sour' smell is almost always created by bacterial / yeast growth. So, it's possible that something is being re-washed and just reactivating the bacteria.

60ºC won't kill it in the machine either as parts of the drum won't get anywhere near that temperature. In fact they'll just get a nice damp steamy environment that encourages bacteria to grow.

If your machine has a boil-wash option, select it and run it with 2 bath towels and a good dose of oxygen-bleach detergent.

It's a little like making sour-dough bread, all it takes is one or two items with live bugs on them and it will keep spreading much like the dough starter.

If you're in a hard water area, make sure you descale the machine. The easiest way is with citric acid or distilled vinegar i.e. the same way you'd descale a coffee machine.

Citric acid is probably a nicer option as it smells like lemons where as vinegar has other components that won't necessarily make your laundry smell all that nice.
There are a few proprietary machine cleaning products out there too which can help too.

One solution we found worked on a very gunked up machine was dishwasher powder. Couple of 95ºC cycles and it cleared up everything.
You do need to include a couple of sacrificial towels though as they will cause water to splash around the drum and coat the outer drum.

 

[mrboilwash]

I know I`m going to get bashed for it but that is exactly why I love my boil washes so much.
Bad smells in laundry is usually a hygienical problem, but apart from germs an (invisible) build up of sebum and sweat could be another reason.
Remember soil removing (sebum and dead skin flakes) is often more difficult for detergents than stain removing (grass, lipstick and so on).

If your clothes can`t take very high temperatures I would try to increase the amount of detergent and stay away from short cycles. Liquid oxygen bleaches have proven to be good deodorizers for me whilst being gentler to colours than traditional powders that contain bleach. The failure of Napisan in the prewash means probably the contact time wasn`t long enough.

In my opinion the damage to clothes from very long cycles, exagerated temperatures and oxygen bleaches is still better than throwing things away because of odors that cannot be removed.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Sorry that this has happened

If you will use the Searcholator, you will find that this problem has been addressed before. I don't know if you can buy the bottles of Lysol disinfectant that come in a box down there, but it is a disinfectant that has instructions for eliminating your problem. Here you can find it in both brown trimmed and sort of blue trimmed boxes. I think the bottles hold 16 ounces. Unlike chlorine bleach, the Lysol will disinfect without damaging fabrics or harming colors. If you can't find the Lysol disinfectant, maybe you can find a quaternary ammonia product to disinfect the laundry. With both products, you use them in water without detergent and soak laundered fabrics.

As others have said, the odor is not in your machine, but in the fabrics. Back in the 70s, I washed a friend's laundry in my Duomatic. Long story short, his socks stank and, it having a condensing drying system, the air in the machine stank, so I soaked them in a disinfectant containing phenol and rewashed the socks and they did not stink anymore. You are going to have to disinfect the fabrics that have this odor to eliminate it. Once you have eliminated it, faster drying will probably keep it from recurring.

 

[logixx]

When we got our puppy, I bought a bottle of Dettol floor cleaner (which you don't seem to have in Australia). I once applied some of it, undiluted, to some of my sweaters that would develop a funky odor (even though I wash them at 40C, powder, fully dry them on the hottest setting etc.). I folded them and let them sit for an hour or so. They came out of the dryer absolutely fresh and the odor didn't return.

What kind of Electrolux machine do you have? On some washers, you can press and hold the start button and the one next to it and turn the cycle dial. The machine will run through several modes - one of which will fill the drum with water and spin it around at 100 rpm or so. Makes a nice cleaning cycle if you do this during a boil wash.

 

[MrX]

Whatever you do, do not use Dettol, Lysol or Savlon antiseptic disinfectants that are suitable for washing wounds. They will leave your washing machine smelling like a hospital for months!

There are other versions usually sold as lavender, citrus and other scents that are completely safe to use in a washing machine. These are not suitable for cleaning cuts/grazes, but they are fine for household cleaning and will not leave your washing machine machine smelling like an operating theatre.

 

[foraloysius]

Talk about socks, is it possible a sock or another small laundry item ended up between the inner and outer drum?

 

[ronhic]

Thanks for the suggestions....I've a few things to work my way through, one of which is to do a 90c cycle with a hit of dishwasher detergent this evening!

 

[whirlcool]

If it will kill odors of this nature, then it should kill anything in your laundry..

 

[rapunzel]

then it should kill anything in your laundry..

or the bedroom. Not only did it preserve youth and marital bliss, it also worked as a birth control agent. And here I was thinking that it was only good for washing out my trash cans.

Well, accordig to Wikipedia (source of all modern wisdom), Lysol was the most common way of suiciding in Australia in 1911 - who knew?

 

[circlew]

Sounds like the cause of the odor could be fungal. I had this happen to some towels, and got the odor out with a quat based sanitizer. Soaked them in a tub.

 

[brainardcooper]

Same Situation

I agree with YogiTunes.

I had the same sounding situation this summer. I could not figure out why my laundry smelled sour. I got embarrassed on a trip to Montreal when my friends noticed. After trying all the options from cleaning my machine to adding wash additives I ended solving the problem by doubling the amount of detergent (Fab). After 2 or 3 washes the smell was gone & has not come back.

I dry all my laundry on the line & I even used the dryer when I was trying to fix the problem. Nothing helped until I added more detergent.

bc