I have a washing machine, an indoor clothes drying rack and a rotary dryer in the back garden (standard town housing estate).
When I wash clothes in the machine and dry them indoors, they smell fine - like conditioner if you sniff them or I have just taken a fresh load out, but basically just clean.
Until last month, if I washed clothes in the machine and hung them outside on the rotary dryer they also smelled fine - also slightly of conditioner, or sometimes with lovely bonus "fresh" smell from drying in the sunshine.
The washing machine itself doesn't smell musty.
For the last month every time I have hung clothes outside they have acquired a really strong, sickly, musty unpleasant smell, which lingers on them when I bring them inside to the point that you can smell it when you first enter the house. It gradually fades so a day or two later the clothes don't really have it unless you sniff them hard, but I don't like it in those first few days!
It reminds me of the smell of pet rats (especially female ones), but whilst it is hypothetically possible that there could be wild rats around in the garden as it is an outside space and there are bins etc nearby, the garden itself doesn't have the smell anywhere, and if rats are appearing once I go back indoors and shinning up the dryer to pee on the clothes, why are none missing/chewed/stained etc?
Clothes dried indoors continue to be fine, as usual, so the key factor is definitely the outdoor dryer.
Has anyone else had this dubious mystery washing smell? What was it?