How to clean your washing machine with citric acid

When buying chemicals for a washing machine, users often try to save money - powders, conditioners and various additives are quite expensive. This must also include the cost of the descaling agent. It is used to prevent plaque from settling on the heating element and the drum of the machine.. But there is a cheaper way - cleaning the washing machine with citric acid gives fantastic results, but it costs mere pennies. Let's see how to properly clean the washing machine with lemon juice and save money in your wallet.

In this review, we will address the following questions:

• Is this method really effective?
• How many grams to put and how to observe the correct dosage;
• How often should cleaning be done?
• How to take proper care of your washing machine.

Many other points will also be touched upon.

The effectiveness of this cleaning method

Cleaning the drum of a washing machine with citric acid is highly effective. Acid well cleans metal parts and heating elements from scale, giving the unit almost pristine cleanliness. Cleaning does not take much time, does not require disassembly of equipment, does not harm internal components, and copes with even the most serious deposits.Before we tell you how to descale a washing machine with citric acid, we will talk about the effectiveness of the technique.

It is very easy to make sure that citric acid copes well with scale - for this we need the most ordinary kitchen kettle. If the water in your area is hard, you will see scale on the bottom in the form of a white or creamy coating. These are water-insoluble salts that form when boiled. Their entry into the human body does not give much health. And in washing machines, they lead to the formation of various malfunctions.

The use of citric acid will completely get rid of even the most inveterate deposits. Let's process the teapot as follows:

• We buy a lemon in the store - you need to pour it directly into the kettle;
• Next, fill in the water - it needs to be boiled (in electric kettles we wait for the automatic shutdown);
• We drain the water and enjoy the brilliant cleanliness of the inner walls.

Rinsing and cleaning the washing machine is carried out in the same way. Even the most hardened critics who doubt the possibilities of citric acid can be convinced by the example of a kettle that the method we have described gives simply excellent results.

Advantages of the procedure

Cleaning the washing machine with citric acid is very, very cheap - a large pack of lemons costs 30-40 rubles, and in some places it is sold by the kilogram (which is even cheaper). Professional care products are much more expensive.In addition, they need to be bought constantly, while washing with citric acid is done once every 3-4 months, not more often. Therefore, the first advantage is saving money, which is what we are striving for.

Citric acid is environmentally friendly, because it is the most common food additive. At the same time, it is caustic, and it is added to products in limited quantities. To clean the washing machine, you need lemons quite a bit, a few tens of grams.Its use practically does not harm the environment, as do the chemicals contained in store products. And this is the second advantage - you can not only clean the washing machine with citric acid, but also take care of the purity of nature.

Citric acid for a washing machine is a cheap and affordable tool that is literally in every pavilion and store that sells food. Therefore, it is unlikely that any problems will arise with its search. It is also sold in supermarkets and hypermarkets, in city markets. If you have friends in the food industry, ask them if they use lemon - it is quite possible that they can bring you a couple of kilograms of this product (this amount is enough to clean the washing machine for more than one year). The third advantage is ubiquitous availability.

Cleaning the washing machine with soda and citric acid gives a good effect - this powerful cocktail of two harmless substances is able to fight not only with scale, but also with persistent dirt, with a fungus. It also helps against mold, which literally eats up rubber seals and settles its spores in the laundry.

How cleaning is done

Lemon gave us citric acid, which we can use when cleaning the washing machine. True, it is not extracted from lemons at all, but is synthesized artificially, but the essence of the matter does not change from this. Let's talk about the recipe for our procedure and tell you how to clean the drum with a lemon - this is nothing new. Some people think that it needs to be added during washing, but this is not so - the procedure is performed within one cycle without laying laundry. Here is a step by step guide:

• We prepare the washing machine for cleaning - we remove all things from it, inspect it so that subtle things do not get stuck on the walls;
• It does not interfere with washing the rubber seal with a damp cloth and thoroughly wiping the glass;
• We pour citric acid into the compartment for the washing machine - this is necessary so that it can flush the chute through which the detergent enters the drum. The rest of the compartments are left empty;
• We close the loading hatch, start cleaning - if you decide to wash the drum for the first time in a long time, set the longest program with a temperature of +90 degrees. If you still carry out periodic cleaning and preventive maintenance with store products, turn on the longest program with a temperature of +60 degrees;
• We are waiting for the end of the program - cleaning the washing machine with citric acid is completed, you can open the door and ventilate.

No additional measures need to be taken. If you manage to look at the heating element, you will see that it has become shiny and clean - in some washing machines you can see it through the holes in the drum by shining a flashlight there and spinning the drum itself.

Dosage and other recommendations

If you intend to clean your washing machine with citric acid, you need to determine the dosage. We recommend pouring 120 gr. for 6 kg of laundry. lemons, for 5 kg - 100 gr. That is, for every kilogram - 20 grams of acid. It is not recommended to exceed the indicated dose, since excess lemon can have a destructive effect on the rubber seal. It is also not worth reducing the amount, since there can be a lot of scale on the heating element and pollution in the car.

The selected program must be complete - with a final rinse. This is necessary to completely remove acid residue from the inside of the washing machine. Together with a lemon, the remnants of scale will be removed from it. We recommend running the washer on the Cotton 90 or Synthetics 60 program. It will wash for a long time, but it will completely remove all limescale, cope with other contaminants, and clean the internal surfaces of the tank and drum.

As for the frequency of washing, everything is simple here - once every 3 months at a temperature of +60 degrees is enough. If the last cleaning of the washing machine was carried out a very long time ago or was not carried out at all, it is recommended to run it at a temperature of +90 degrees - in this mode, cleaning will be as effective as possible. It is not necessary to add citric acid during washing - this will not achieve any effect or even reduce the effectiveness of the washing powder.

Other washing machine care tips:

• If your area has very hard water, install a softening filter - this way you will protect equipment from breakdowns. Increased hardness manifests itself in the form of a barely noticeable film on the surface of clean, freshly drawn water from a tap, or in the form of a grandiose lime scale in your kettle;
• Even if the water in your area is relatively soft, we recommend that you carry out preventive cleaning of your washing machine with citric acid - in addition to plaque, other deposits may settle on the heating element and drum that require removal (including lint);
• After cleaning the washing machine, we recommend looking under the rubber seal and into the filter - citric acid residues and scale residues may be found here. All these contaminants must be removed.

Thus, there is nothing complicated in caring for a washing machine - you just need to regularly clean it with food-grade citric acid. And forget about expensive products like Calgon - lemon is more effective and cheaper.