Mighty Mud Dash made a Mighty Mess of my washing machine!

This past Saturday we participated in the Mighty Mud Dash here in Houston. It was a 5k with many obstacles, most of which involved a lot of mud! I have to be perfectly honest with you guys... I used to love playing in the dirt and mud as a kid and after the race I realized we don't do that often enough as adults. This race basically made me feel like a little kid again. Quite a few times I mentioned that it would be really cool if they opened the area we were racing in for ATV's. Mudding on a four wheeler is really fun. If there were a "gym" that offered an obstacle course for workouts I would sign up in a minute. A lot of people made a big deal out of the obstacles, but I was shocked that I was able to get through most of them without a huge struggle. The Mud Mougles were the hardest, in my opinion. They were hills about four feet up, that dropped into water about 3 feet deep only to lead to another fout foot hill. There were 3 hills and three water pits and because of the water and mud there was no traction. I had to crawl out at  the side of the second water pit, which was still hard. I attempted the mougles but they got the best of me. I loved this race. The night before I kept waking up because I was so anxious and worried about whether or not it would kill us. Once we got started though, all those fears just slipped my mind because I was too busy laughing my butt off and having fun. I am so thankful that my husband and my friend Bebe participated with me. I think we made a great team.

As you can see in the pictures above, we were covered in filth! Brandon suggested that I get in the shower with my clothes on to try to get the mud off before we washed our clothes. If I could have taken a picture of the filth in the shower I would have. It was bad. Still, I thought I had gotten a lot of the mud out of the three articles of clothing I wore. Today I put all our race clothes in the washer. After the whole wash and extra rinse cycle was done  I was shocked to see this: (The stuff on the drum is muddy soap suds. I think.)

 

I put the clothes through two more cycles. I also posted this picture on facebook. I was wishing I had used the community washing machines at my apartment complex instead of my machine. One of my friends suggested that I get a washing machine cleaner that is made by Tide. I wasthisclose to doing just that when I remembered; I HAVE A PIN FOR THIS SITUATION!

Source: onegoodthingbyjillee.com via Tiffany on Pinterest

I have owned my machine for a few years now and I did not realize I should be doing this once a quarter, that is until I started cleaning my machine! If you want a good fright before Halloween, wash your washing machine! I was so grossed out upon closer inspection. I mean if you look at the picture above the pin, my fabric softener dispenser is pretty shameful. I almost didn't post the picture on facebook because of that alone. Well it looks bad from that angle and I wanted to get it extra clean so I thought I would pull it off and let it soak in the bleach water.  Once that bad boy was off I was faced with this:

What is that pink slime? I don't even use pink softener, or I haven't in many months! You don't even want me to talk about how it looked between the top of the drum and the drum cover (?). I almost had my head in the water while I got under all the nooks and crannies and I was slightly mortified that I expected this dirty thing to get my clothes clean. If you don't feel like googling measurements and you aren't some whiz at knowing conversions off the top of your head, here is your cheat: one quart is four cups. If you are judging me for googling that keep it to yourself. What I don't know can't hurt me. I wish  I was more proficient at math. Those of you that did not know it off the top of your head, cheers!

Once the first go round with the bleach was done I took these pictures:

I was tempted to skip the last half of the procedure but I didn't. The cleanliness was already impressive. During this long cleaning process I took the time to look into the Tide Laundry Washing Machine Cleaner . I read a few pages of the reviews and while most were good, the few that were not so good made me glad I used the method I had pinned. For one, my husband does not like me to use Tide washing detergent because it makes his skin itch and secondly, bleach is bad enough on it's own, but the other chemicals in the Tide option are probably better to avoid than use. If you want to save money, the option
I chose is cheaper as well.  I can't tell you exactly the cost, because I don't remember how much I spent on my 1.35 gallon jug of Clorox or my 1 gallon of vinegar but I could tell you that I spent less than $7.86 on both, if even half of that.  Are you ready for the final reveal? This has been a long post! Wait for it....

Could I visibly tell a difference from the second step using vinegar? No, but I am going to trust the magical powers of vinegar. Have you read all of the cool uses for vinegar on the wide world of the internet? If not plan to use up a good few hours reading all the cool stuf you can use it for around your home. Now you know why I buy vinegar by the gallon.

After taking a few hours to go through this process I am going to have a lot more peace of mind when I wash my next load of laundry. I feel like I can safely say the dirt from the Mighty Mud Dash has been exorcised from my machine. Once the initial scrub down was over things weren't so nasty. I had expected this mud run to inspire me to get back to my regular workout regime, since I had been slacking before. I had no idea it would also motivate me to attack the grime in my washing machine. If I keep this up every three months (because  we do have hard water where I live,) I don't think it will be as nasty for the next go round! I hope you enjoyed this post and if you give this a try, let me know what you thought of the experience or if there are things you would do differently! (P.S. If you follow the jump on the pin there is a link for cleaning your front loader, in case you do not have a top loader like mine.)

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