Cleaning an HE Washer with Household Products

It was time to clean our HE washer and I was out of cleaning tablets. They are expensive ($12 for three tablets), it was early one Saturday morning and I didn't want to get out in the cold to go get more tablets. I turned to Pinterest! I searched up how to clean an HE washer and there were a few different ways. This is what I chose to do.

The vinegar and baking soda method was most used in the "how-tos" that I found on Pinterest and I had both items on hand so it seemed like it was worth a try and of course way cheaper!

NOTE: Our washer is a smarty pants, it tells me when it wants to be cleaned. We switched to homemade laundry soap back in September. You can read about that HERE. The machine doesn't ask to be cleaned near as often as when I used liquid soap full time. I love the homemade soap, but I missed the smell of the softener in the liquid soap. I decided to get another bottle and use it for a while just to experiment. I've cleaned the machine twice in the time it took to use the bottle of liquid soap...not good!

To clean your HE front load washer you will need 2 cups vinegar and 1 cup baking soda, any brand will do, this is just what I had handy. This method literally costs pennies to clean the washer! That beats the heck out of $4 a cleaning the tablets would cost us! Woohoo!

I added 1/2 cup of baking soda to the drum and another 1/2 cup in the soap dispenser drawer.

Next I added 1 cup of vinegar in the drum and 1 cup to the dispensing drawer as well. See the bubbling reaction there when I added the vinegar? That didn't happen in the dispensing drawer because there are 2 separate compartments. Whew! I then closed up the door and drawer and set it to the cleaning cycle, our machine takes a little more than an hour to go through the whole process.

These next 3 pictures are the before and after shots I took to document my experiment. The only thing I could tell was different from the tablets and the home mixture was the scent that the tablets left behind. It was not there, but a fresh, clean smell was there instead! YAY!

I'm sold that vinegar and baking soda works just as well as the very expensive tablets. I have to go to Lowes to get the tablets, they aren't sold in any of the grocery stores in my little town and I can get vinegar and baking soda at the grocery store or dollar store with no problem any time.