Please help - washing machine keeps ruining my clothes

[Washingproblem]

This has been going on for a few months now. We keep ending up with these lines, mainly on knitwear but also other stuff. It's happened to both new and old clothing, including good quality stuff that's been fine for years and then ruined practically overnight.

These photos were taken after ironing, so the problem cannot be solved by ironing. The lines are not creases.

We have already tried:

• Doing an empty wash at 90 degrees
• Cleaning the rubber seal
• Using a special machine-cleaning liquid that we bought
• Stopped doing eco-washes and switched to full-length
• Been careful not to over-fill the machine

What's causing this problem? I've never had this problem ever before and then it suddenly started a few months ago.

So many of my clothes have been ruined! Please help!

Well you’ve changed the washing machine so we can rule that out.

It has to be the ecover. Possibly you could have a dodgy batch or they've changed the formula without telling you, it does happen.

Or it’s the bicarbonate. Unless you washed the brand new skirt on its one your clothes will have remaining bicarbonate still in them so it will be in your wash.

I'm not convinced at all tbh.

What do you think it is? Is it real?

Well, the only common factor here is the detergent. Try a control wash with no detergent. And then another wash with a "standard" detergent (maybe you can just wash your partners clothes if you're allergic).

Yes it's real

I'm particularly upset about my skirt because it's one I've had before for many years without a problem, but I gained weight so I bought the same skirt in a larger size. It's made of the exact same fabric by the same woman who still makes them. The smaller one is still in great condition but the new, larger one was ruined with just one wash.

Also my DH washed a load of his t-shirts this afternoon, with Ecover, and none of them got damaged. Only my skirt, which is made of the same fabric as the old one (100% cotton).

I'm shocked by the levels of ignorance around bicarb. It's an allergy-friendly cleaning product which has been used for washing for over a hundred years. It's so safe that it's actually fit for human consumption, which cannot be said of other washing powders these days. People who think it's only a baking ingredient are really not very well informed.

www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/house-and-home/household-advice/a669645/21-cleaning-problems-you-can-solve-with-bicarbonate-of-soda/

www.armandhammer.com/articles/how-get-laundry-extra-clean

I’m not ignorant thank you. I use bicarbonate to keep my fridge smelling fresh and to clean my sink.

But, if it was ruining my laundry I’d stop using it.

You're quite dismissive of suggestions, OP. Al you can do is keep testing and eliminating. The first obvious thing to test - now that you know it's not your machine - is your detergent and not using bicarb.

My point was that it may have been used for laundry 100 years ago, but they weren’t using modern electric washing machines. They are designed for actual detergent. FFS.

But I haven't used bicarb in the new machine. So it's more likely to be Ecover causing a problem if anything. I've been using it for years though, so maybe they've changed an ingredient.

The bicarbonate will still be in the fabric of your DH tshirts.

So it's not the washing machine, the temperature, the wash cycle, the spin RPM, the detergent or the bicarbonate soda - then what do you think it is?

That picture of the skirt you've posted has a perfect cross through the middle of it. It's extremely neat, like it's been pressed.

What do you do with the clothes while they're damp? Do you get them straight out of the machine? Hang dry? Radiator? Clothes Airer?

Are you filling the wash up to capacity? Too many clothes maybe?

Were DHs T-Shirts light or dark? I wonder if there's a build up of sludge or something in the connecting pipes which is causing marks to be left of lighter clothes but not seen on darker clothes.

Wow, I’ve got my first ever deletion.

Seriously OP, have a grip.

Try a wash minus any product and go from there, I'm not being rude but I think cheap clothes can do this, it always happened to my acrylic jumpers, so to stop this happening I'd buy Persil silk and wool liquid detergent and always wash on a hand wash.

I've never heard of bicarbonate being used in a washing machine, soda crystals yes.