Last Updated on October 4, 2026 by Umar Farooq
How to clean a washing machine properly, in one line: six parts, worked top-down, finishing at the drain pump filter — and none of it involves mixing vinegar with baking soda. The drum gets all the attention because it is the part you can see. It is rarely the part that smells. The film responsible lives in the dispenser drawer, under the lip of the door gasket, and in the standing water behind the filter door — and a hot empty cycle reaches almost none of it.
This page is the routine and the schedule: which parts exist, what order to do them in, and how often each genuinely needs it. Three of the six have their own page, linked below.
What a deep clean is actually removing
The thing you are shifting is biofilm — bacteria, mould and fungi bound in a matrix that also traps undissolved detergent, softener and body oils. It is not dirt sitting loose on a surface, which is why a rinse does nothing to it and why the smell returns four days after you thought you had dealt with it. It anchors itself, and it grows fastest where a machine keeps water: warm, dark crevices that never dry out.
The scale of it is public record. Whirlpool settled class actions covering 5.6 million Whirlpool, Maytag and Kenmore front-loaders built between 2001 and 2010 over mould, final approval September 2016, and LG settled a parallel case covering several hundred thousand more. If your machine smells, you are not doing laundry badly — you are meeting a documented characteristic of a sealed, low-water drum.
Two habits feed it. Cold washes never reach a temperature that disrupts the film, and over-dosing detergent leaves surplus surfactant behind as food — Samsung’s own guidance is blunt: “Using too much detergent will create buildup inside the washer, which will cause issues with the washer’s performance” (how to use detergent in your Samsung washing machine). If that sounds familiar, read signs of too much detergent first.
Clean it in the order the water runs
The order matters, and it is not fussiness. Everything you dislodge upstream — drawer crust, gasket slime, loosened scale — travels downstream and lands in the drain pump filter, the last thing before the waste pipe. Clean the filter first and you will simply refill it an hour later. Work top-down and the cleanout at the end catches the whole evening’s debris in one go. Set aside an evening, not an hour.
How to clean a washing machine, part by part
1. The detergent drawer
Pull the drawer fully out — nearly all release with a tab inside the recess — and soak it in hot water for ten minutes before touching it with a brush. Scrub the softener siphon cap separately: that small plastic dome is where softener sets into a gel that stops the compartment emptying. Then torch the empty housing and clean the nozzles in its roof, the half everybody skips (detergent not dispensing).
Dry it before it goes back. Samsung’s instruction for keeping it that way is the only after-every-wash interval this site has found a manufacturer publish: “you can easily keep the detergent drawer clean by wiping it dry after every wash session” (how to clean your Samsung washer).
2. The drum and outer tub
This is the tub clean or Self Clean cycle, and it does what a hot wash cannot: a high-water, high-agitation program that scours the outer tub, the sealed cavity around the drum you can neither see nor reach. Run it empty — adding a towel “to scrub with” defeats the water level the cycle is built around. What to put in it varies by machine: washer tub clean cycle explained.
3. The door gasket
On a front-loader this is the most productive part to clean, and the one most people wipe the wrong half of. The visible face is not the problem. Water pools in the folded lip underneath, out of sight, with hair, grit and a coin or two, and never dries. Peel the lip back gently and work all the way round. The step-by-step, including which cleaners are safe on rubber: how to clean a washing machine gasket.
4. The drain pump filter
Behind a small door at the bottom front of most front-loaders sits a filter holding standing water permanently. It catches coins, hair clips and lint, and because it is always wet it is the likeliest source of the smell you blamed on the drum. It carries the clearest documented interval: LG says “it is recommended to clean the drain pump filter on a monthly basis” (how to clean the drain pump filter). Towels down first — full procedure at how to clean the drain pump filter.
5. The drain hose and standpipe
Once a year, and only once a year. Check the hose is not kinked, the standpipe mouth is not slimed over, and water is not backing up while the pump runs. A drain that has grown slower over months is more often the pipe than the machine (washing machine drains too slowly).
6. The parts nobody counts
Wipe the door glass, the flat rim it seals against, and the underside of a top-loader’s lid where condensation collects. Then leave the door and drawer ajar between washes — that costs nothing and prevents more regrowth than any product in the routine.
How often each part actually needs it
Most guides give one frequency for the whole machine, usually “monthly”, which is wrong in both directions: far too rare for a gasket, unnecessary for a drain hose. Frequencies belong to parts, not machines. Two of the intervals below are published by manufacturers and marked as such; the rest are this site’s recommendation, and the third column is the tell that one has slipped.
| Part | How often | The tell that it is overdue |
|---|---|---|
| Dispenser drawer | Wipe dry after every wash (Samsung’s instruction); soak monthly | Pink or black film in the corners; softener left in its compartment |
| Door gasket (front-load) | Wipe the lip dry weekly; scrub monthly | Grey speckling under the fold; smell strongest with the door shut |
| Drum and outer tub | Every 20 washes top-load, 40 front-load — Samsung’s Self Clean reminder interval | Clothes that dried properly still smell faintly damp |
| Drain pump filter (front-load) | Monthly — LG’s stated interval | Drain slows, cycles run long, or a rattle during the pump run |
| Drawer housing and nozzles | Every three months | White crust on the roof of the recess; detergent left at cycle end |
| Drain hose and standpipe | Yearly, or whenever draining slows | Gurgling at the standpipe; water rising at the connection |
| Door and drawer left ajar | After every load | Condensation on the glass hours after the cycle ended |
Never done any of it? Work the whole list once, then keep to the weekly gasket wipe and the monthly filter.
The vinegar and baking soda recipe is chemistry theatre
Most “deep clean” articles are one recipe: two cups of vinegar in the drum, half a cup of baking soda after it, hot cycle, done. Put an acid and a base into the same wash and they do what acids and bases do — neutralise each other, fizzing off carbon dioxide and leaving sodium acetate in water. Salty water. Whatever cleaning either might have done separately, you have just spent it on a bubbling noise.
Used apart they are not useless, but they are not what the machines are built for. Samsung’s wording covers more ground than people quote: “Do not use regular detergent, organic detergent, natural detergent, or HE detergents containing natural ingredients, such as vinegar or baking soda. Using these can cause damage to the washing machine” (how to use detergent in your Samsung washing machine). Four categories in two sentences, and the risk it flags is to the machine, not the clothes. What manufacturers specify instead is a tub clean cycle run empty with a machine cleaner tablet, or liquid chlorine bleach where the manual permits it.
Never mix bleach with vinegar or any other cleaner. Chlorine and acid together release chlorine gas. One product, one cycle, door open afterwards.
What a deep clean will not fix
The routine clears odour coming from deposits, which is most of it. It will not fix a smell sourced outside the machine — a dry trap in the waste pipe, or a drain hose pushed too far into the standpipe — and it will not fix one that returns within days, which means something is still holding water. Which of those you have is its own job: washing machine smells musty takes the sources in order.
It will not sterilise anything either, whatever the cleaner’s label says. A tested sanitising claim is specific: NSF P172 requires a 99.9% reduction of test organisms on the sanitisation cycle and no carryover between loads, and certification is optional, so most machines have never been through it (washer sanitize cycle explained).
FAQ
How often should you deep clean a washing machine?
The full routine, two or three times a year. The parts run on their own clocks though — gasket weekly, pump filter monthly, tub cycle every 20 to 40 washes. Doing all of it monthly is more work than the machine needs; yearly is not enough for the gasket.
What is the best thing to run through a washing machine to clean it?
A machine cleaner tablet on an empty tub clean cycle, or liquid chlorine bleach if the manual specifies it. The cycle matters more than the product does.
Is bleach or vinegar better for cleaning a washing machine?
Bleach, where your manual allows it, because it kills what is growing rather than loosening deposits. Vinegar is a mild acid and suits mineral scale better than biofilm. Never use both, and never in one cycle.
Can I deep clean a top-loader the same way?
Mostly, minus two jobs. Top-loaders generally have no drain pump filter — LG states it is “not available on top load washers” — and no door gasket. Clean under the lid rim and around the agitator base instead.
My machine still smells after a deep clean. What did I miss?
Almost always the filter, or the underside of the gasket lip, in that order. If both are genuinely clean and the smell survives two washes, suspect the drain rather than the machine.
Does leaving the door open really help?
Yes, and it is the highest-value habit on the list. Biofilm needs standing moisture; an open door and a pulled-out drawer let the drum dry between loads, the one condition it cannot grow in.
If you only do two parts, do the gasket and the filter
If you only ever do two of the six, do the gasket and the filter. They hold the standing water, and together they take about four minutes a week. The drum is the part you can see, which is why every article starts there — and why people finish a two-hour vinegar routine with a machine that still smells on Thursday.
