How many times have you done laundry and felt like when you pulled it out of the dryer, something was missing?
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing laundry for just one person or a family of five, chances are, at least one item of clothing magically disappears.
You know what item that is. It is a sock. It might be the left, it might be the right. You might somehow lose one sock from two different pairs. It is an honest to God mystery.
It isn’t gnomes or fairies playing tricks on you. You’re not losing your mind either.
Apparently, your washing machine is messing with your head and eating your clothing. Maybe you thought it was the dryer snatching up your spare socks, but it seems the culprit is actually the washer.
One woman shared the evidence found by her husband proving that the washing machine is a dirty little thief.
Cathy Hintz, a property manager, posted in 2017 about what her husband found.
“Today, my husband got tired of fooling with one of the washing machines that was just not working properly and decided to take it apart, starting with the bottom panel. To his shock, this is what he found…
Socks, underwear, a credit card… and that is just what was in the bottom of the machine. When he removed the water pump that removes the water from the machine, he found about $7.00 in change.”
They’ve been managing properties for about 25 years and her husband has worked on appliances for that long, but he’d never seen anything like this before.
The photos went viral this month when Twitter user Sarah Rose shared them on her feed.
The post got over 76,000 likes and 25,000 retweets. Many people responded on Twitter, thanking Sarah for sharing this photo.
But a true hero explained how we can all find these missing socks! Matthew “Pernicious Lint Wrangler” Frederick responded:
For the folks seeing this who by (small) chance see my reply, check the duct that comes out of the back of the dryer, often a white, large, Slinky-like tube. Comes off and on incredibly easy.
Socks, stuff from your pockets, etc.
Cleaning it will dry your clothes faster, too.
After the news went viral, the TODAY show covered it and even spoke with an expert on these appliances.
James Darmstadt, a quality engineer at GE Appliances, said this a pretty extreme case. Apparently, it can happen in front-load washing machines when the thick rubber that circles the door is damaged.
“On many front- and top-load washing machines today, there is a filter or basket that is a part of the drain pump assembly. This should be cleaned by the consumer. t is often a simple five-minute task to access the drain pump filter, clean out and replace.”
Now I know what to do the next time one of my favorite socks goes missing!
Apparently, GE even has a video for how to extract items that might have gotten lost in the mythical world of your washing machine.
Check out the video below:
H/T: Scary Mommy