Worst thing you've accidentally put in the washing machine

[MsWhatsit]

Inspired by this thread.

You know the feeling - that sinking feeling of opening up the washing machine (or dryer) and seeing bits of paper, or melted plastic, or exploded ink, or cell phone parts, in with the clothing. What's your worst story?

I have two. One was when I accidentally laundered my tickets to see the Columbus Symphony doing Holiday at the Pops. After half an hour of panic, it occurred to me to just call the box office and see if they could replace them, and luckily they could.

The other was when I missed one of MrWhatsit's ink pens in his front shirt pocket, and wound up with an entire load of clothing festively painted in splatters of bright blue. That one necessitated the purchase of two replacement uniform shirts and a whole bunch of new socks.

[pbbth]

This weekend I accidentally ran a cough drop through the washer and dryer. Now all of my jeans smell like honey, eucalyptus and menthol.

[Duke]

I washed my passport. Two weeks before I had to go back to England to defend my doctoral dissertation (I obviously wasn't thinking clearly).

[PotLuck]

A tube of blood-red M.A.C. lipstick. *sigh* Their lipstick really does stay on.

[schnuckiputzi]

not me. my middle kid. A purple sparkly crayon.

[SharkB8]

I've washed a cellphone. That was probably be the worst.

Also, while at boot camp, people in my company used to leave those cheap ball point pens in their breast pocket and then send off their uniforms for washing along with everyone else's in those commercial washing machines.

Several of us would get back items covered and ruined by pen ink. The source was almost always traceable.

My boyfriend will wear nothing but cargo pants and actually used the cargo areas...If I'm lazy, I won't always check the pockets or will miss one of the 382747832 pockets his pants have. I've washed scratch tickets and lens cloths before. The sucky thing about the scratch tickets was that they broke apart into a zillion pieces that would show up al dried and fluffy in the dryer for an additional 5 or so loads.

[Jeep's Phoenix]

When I was about 7, I washed a whole pack of gum. I had left the gum in my pants pocket; my mom (who has always refused to check pockets for some reason) put them in the wash with the rest of the family's laundry. I don't recall it actually ruining anything; I think it all clumped together in one spot.

[Karyn]

I accidentally left a new red t-shirt in the washer and then did a load of my partner's white shirts in hot water right after that. It turned them all pink.

[Earthworm Jim]

I've got 4 kids. At the time they were all (IIRC) under 10, and they were running around my parents house like usual during a visit, being...boisterous. It was getting on in the late afternoon when one of the other friends who was over started searching the house for something.

Us: What are you looking for?

Him: My gun. Anyone seen it?



Us: Um...no. Is it loaded?

Him: Yep.



Time to round up the kids, make sure no one's packin', and keep an eye on them til we find it...

By now, you're all thinking "Are you sure you're in the right thread, Jim?"

Yup - we found it when the washer went to spin cycle. He'd somehow dumped the gun into the washer with a bunch of dirty laundry without realizing it.

Ahh, good times...

[MsWhatsit]

Originally Posted by Earthworm Jim

Yup - we found it when the washer went to spin cycle. He'd somehow dumped the gun into the washer with a bunch of dirty laundry without realizing it.

Ahh, good times...

I almost hate to ask this, but did you find it the easy way, or the hard way?

[Antinor01]

I've washed my wallet numerous times. One of the most annoying was when I didn't realize my monthly bus pass was still in my pocket when it got put in the washer, on the first week of the month. All I found was a few bits of paper and the 2 zone sticker that goes on it.

[Earthworm Jim]

Originally Posted by MsWhatsit

I almost hate to ask this, but did you find it the easy way, or the hard way?

Sorry, the easy way. While it was quite loud and thumpy, there was a distinct lack of carnage. Thankfully.

[Chronos]

I washed my passport. Two weeks before I had to go back to England to defend my doctoral dissertation (I obviously wasn't thinking clearly).

Twice. Fortunately those things are pretty robust; it's still readable. And in fact, both were related to the cargo pants problem SharkB8 mentions: I always wear cargo pants for travelling, because the cargo pocket is so convenient for things like ID, itinerary, tickets, etc., but since I don't usually wear cargo pants, I sometimes forget to empty those pockets.

[Foxy40]

Crayons but what was worse was I didn't notice them until they went through the dryer.

What a mess.

[Dung Beetle]

Originally Posted by Earthworm Jim

Time to round up the kids, make sure no one's packin', and keep an eye on them til we find it...

Ha!

My stepson wears those cargo pants too, and no matter how I try, I can never empty all the pockets. Worst thing of his that I washed was a zip drive.

[corkboard]

Not the washer, but once after skiing the morning in the rain I tossed my shell in the dryer so I could go back out after lunch, forgetting that there was a Chapstik in the inner pocket. It came out all gooey.

[Poysyn]

In boot camp we used to wash our uniforms all together, in two loads. It never failed, once a week one of us would forget their tube of lip balm in their pocket and everything would come out blotchy.

Sucked the next morning on inspection.

I have washed my ID numerous times, it's pretty resilient.

[Dinsdale]

Originally Posted by Foxy40

Crayons but what was worse was I didn't notice them until they went through the dryer.

What a mess.

My wife pretty much always does the laundry, but one time when my kids were young, she was out somewhere and I decided to be nice and do a load. Their brand new snowsuits had gotten dirty, so I tossed them in with a couple of their nicer overalls outfits.

Earlier that week one of the kids' classes had melted crayons into dinosaur crayons, two of which were in one snowsuit pocket. I couldn't begin to estimate the number of hours I spent in the laundry room trying to scrub green and purple streaks out of clothes. Good thing I happened to put all of their nicest/most expensive clothes in a single load.

Yeah - I made an impression on my wife indeed!

[Jelymag]

Originally Posted by MsWhatsit

Inspired by this thread.

Awwww, I inspired someone.

[cornflakes]

A tale from the oilpatch: When they were drilling for oil on a friend's ranch, a rookie on one of the derricks asked how he could get the oil out of his clothes. Someone suggested that he wash the clothes in drip--a liquid, mostly benzine, that comes out separate from the gas and oil and is easy to drain out of the piping. Instead of getting a tub and soaking the clothes, our hero took the drip down to the town's laundromat. He supposedly took the roof off of the building when the washing started the wash cycle.

[Dante]

Originally Posted by Antinor01

I've washed my wallet numerous times. One of the most annoying was when I didn't realize my monthly bus pass was still in my pocket when it got put in the washer, on the first week of the month. All I found was a few bits of paper and the 2 zone sticker that goes on it.

I washed my GO train pass once ($250/month), and it went through the dryer as well, so most of it was still in a very dry, tight lump. Using some tweezers and a couple of picks, I was able to "unfold" it enough that they issued me a new one.

Originally Posted by Earthworm Jim

Sorry, the easy way. While it was quite loud and thumpy, there was a distinct lack of carnage. Thankfully.

Who had to approach the dryer to stop it?

[Autolycus]

Nothing too serious, just a passport, a cell phone, and various other wallet contents.

[Helen's Eidolon]

This happens not infrequently to me (lip balms being the most common) but the worst was my brand-new mp3 player - a Creative Zen MuVo. Through the washer AND the dryer, actually.

It worked just fine afterwards. That got my loyalty to the brand cemented for ever.

[shallora]

A deep red, 100% wool sweater. One week when I was home from college.

I ran it in an all-white load (hot wash cycle).

I don't know HOW I missed it going in, with all the white socks and shirts.

The sweater came out about 1/3 the original size (all those TV cartoons were right!) and extremely faded. Unwearable.

Worse, all the white socks and white t-shirts came out BRIGHT PINK (no joking). The underwear I didn't care about (who was gonna notice?) but I immediately put the white load back in the washer again -- twice -- and although I didn't get everything back to pure white, I got it to where it was at least not pink enough to notice.

[Mariemarie]

girlie TMI warning

A sanitary napkin/ panty liner, one of the super thin, super absorbant, with adhesive strip kind. There's a layer some kind of absorbent gel (silica gel?) that expands and gets kind of collagenous if given enough water. Very gooey icky all over washing machine. Remember to remove before throwing drawers in the wash.

[ashenRiot]

cinnamon gum, a whole freakin' pack! washed and dried. took me hours to scrape all the gum off the sides of the dryer (btw, damp dryer sheets work very well for this) and had to pitch about half the laundry.

[Crocodiles And Boulevards]

A cat.

My mom was drying clothes when I was a kid and had stopped to take a phone call. She'd left the drying machine's door open and the warm, mostly dry shirts must have seemed like a cozy place to the family cat (his name was Mozart). When she came back to the laundry room, she didn't think to check inside the machine and just closed the door and turned it on.

A few minutes later she heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump" coming from the laundry room and went to check. She's a real animal lover, too. We've always had cats, horses, dogs, turtles, you name it. She can't even talk about it without getting choked up, and that had to have been over 10 years ago.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by shallora

A deep red, 100% wool sweater. One week when I was home from college.

I ran it in an all-white load (hot wash cycle).

I don't know HOW I missed it going in, with all the white socks and shirts.

The sweater came out about 1/3 the original size (all those TV cartoons were right!) and extremely faded. Unwearable.

Worse, all the white socks and white t-shirts came out BRIGHT PINK (no joking). The underwear I didn't care about (who was gonna notice?) but I immediately put the white load back in the washer again -- twice -- and although I didn't get everything back to pure white, I got it to where it was at least not pink enough to notice.

Heh. I have no excuse--I threw a black cotton dress in with my lights/whites once and still have no idea why. Since black isn't really black, everything turned a shade of light purple. Bleach in a re-wash took care of most of it but I was on a tight budget and was pretty shaken up there for a little while!

[si_blakely]

My daughter had her cell phone go through the wash - but that was only the start of her woes...

She had gone with her friends to a Jimmy Eat World concert. I got a call from her friend at about 9:00pm, saying that she was a bit "under the weather" and could I pick them up. "Under the influence", more like. She had drunk vodka as they partied beforehand. I got her in the car, where she promptly threw up, over herself, the seat, the floor. We got her home, and into a shower, and her clothes went straight into the wash, including the phone .

So, she had to pay for a replacement phone (via ebay), two new tickets for a later concert (for her and her friend), fuel costs to the new concert, valet costs for the car. A really expensive lesson for a 17 y.o. But one she has learned from. The best lessons hit in the wallet.

Si

[cher3]

I washed my social security card. It was pink for the next decade or so, until I got married and got a new one.

Chapstick is the worst. I had to get rid of most of a load of clothes because I washed and dried them with melted chapstick.

[beanpod]

Gum in my jeans pocket - got gobs of gum and paper all over the load of dark clothes. Ugh.

Also, tissues. Ew.

[Martha Medea]

An iPod - my son left it in his pocket and it went in the wash.

[Xema]

This doesn't really count because it was the dryer, and intentional. And it wasn't me, but friends of my parents.

The item was a package of frozen ground beef, which they wanted to thaw (this was before the age of microwave ovens). The dryer would do that, right? Unfortunately, they were on the verge of leaving for a week's vacation, and in the confusion forgot completely about the beef. Upon their return home, an intense smell reminded them.

[torie]

A bottle of blue nail polish got wrapped up in one of my towels once. Thankfully, I tend to wash towels all by themselves. All the towels are still a mottled blue color.

[Meyer6]

I managed to wash my alarm clock once. My theory is that is somehow got pulled up (and unplugged, I guess) when I was stripping the sheets, and in it went. Amazingly after it dried out it seemed to work just fine, but I'm still baffled as to how I didn't notice it in there.

[Lily Milliner]

I washed and dried a really expensive wristwatch. It came apart into many many pieces. I gathered up what I could and sent it to the maker. They put it back together but it cost a fortune.

I have a rule for myself now that I won't put my watch in my pocket when I take it off my wrist. In my purse, sure, in a bowl on the kitchen counter, fine, on the windowsill in the bathroom, whatever, but never, never in my pocket.

[OneCentStamp]

Originally Posted by schnuckiputzi

not me. my middle kid. A purple sparkly crayon.

This.

If the crayon makes it to the dryer, as it did in my case, it's perfectly capable of ruining an entire load of laundry. And when I total up the replacement costs of four or five pairs of jeans and a like number of button-up and polo shirts (I don't care if my boxers have green blotches on them!), I may well have been better off washing my PDA than a single crayon.

[sovtawen]

Two USB flash drives, on two different occasions. Both survived with data intact, oddly enough.

[Geek Mecha]

My SO's lighter. It must've been empty, because the clothes did not come out smelling like fluid nor did the dryer explode.

Why he can't leave twenty dollar bills in his pocket, I'll never know.

[Runs With Scissors]

I once left a bag of marijuana (it was in a country where it was legal) in a pocket.

For some reason, I figured it out while it was mid-load. Even though it was in a plastic bag, it still got wet.

It was fine, though, after drying out. I guess because it's not water soluble.

I'm very surprised, though, that it didn't make it all the way through the dryer cycle.

[Driver8]

My worst thing is not the cell phone I managed to wash one day.

It is the replacement phone I managed to wash just a few months later.

Not technically what the thread is asking for, but when we moved to Sacramento two months ago we stayed in an extended stay hotel. After I put my clothes in the dryer and go upstairs to work I get a call from the front desk: "Uh, did you have your clothes in the top front dryer?" "Yeah, why?" "Uh ... um ... maybe you should just come downstairs."

I get to the laundry room, at about the same time as two fire trucks, to discover the dryer had set some of my clothes on fire. Some poor old lady had the privilege of pulling my still on fire underwear from the dryer. Unfortunately even the unburnt items were permanently ruined by the smoke, but the hotel's insurance was pretty good about reimbursing us. I hope they comped the lady, I think she saved their hotel!

[Nutty Bunny]

I've washed about 3 lipsticks in my time, but a dirty diaper is the worst thing to accidentally wash. You know the first few months of a baby's life, when you're sleep-deprived and mostly on auto-pilot? Instead of tossing the dirty diaper in the trash and the dirty clothes in the laundry? I did the opposite.

What a fraking mess that was. It took 3 washes to get the diaper innards out of the laundry.

[Silophant]

The worst thing would probably be a tube of Chapstick. Washed and dried. Ruined a bunch of clothes. I've washed flash drives and flash-based MP3 players several times. Always let them dry for a couple days before trying them, never had a problem.

[BiblioCat]

Originally Posted by Foxy40

Crayons but what was worse was I didn't notice them until they went through the dryer.

What a mess.

Me, too. I don't think a trip through the washer would hurt them, but the dryer is the killer. And I did it to a fairly new dryer with a white interior, so the mess really showed up well.
When I moved out of the house about a year ago, there were still red and blue streaks on the inside of the dryer.

[smithsb]

My last deployment in Afghanistan, I stopped by the laundry contractor on base weekly and picked up one or two gallon sized plastic bags of ...... bright shiny 5.56mm ball and tracer rounds that were scavenged from the commercial dryers. We had no functioned rounds (not enough heat or primer impact - lots of cloth padding) but the contractor could always tell from the sound when he had bunch of them. Never got anything larger than .50 cal and only two of those.

How did they have bullets in the pockets?

The troops were always "clearing" the weapons at various entry points. Patrols or convoys were "locked and loaded" - magazines inserted and round chambered. Clearing involved removing the magazine, manually retracting the bolt which would unchamber any round, and dry firing into a sand filled barrel. The round ejected would absentmindedly be put in a pocket somewhere and forgotten about. Guys are not all that great about checking pockets before laundry.

[Quasimodal]

Cell phone

[Sleel]

Originally Posted by Crocodiles And Boulevards

A cat.

My mom was drying clothes when I was a kid and had stopped to take a phone call. She'd left the drying machine's door open and the warm, mostly dry shirts must have seemed like a cozy place to the family cat (his name was Mozart). When she came back to the laundry room, she didn't think to check inside the machine and just closed the door and turned it on.

A few minutes later she heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump" coming from the laundry room and went to check. She's a real animal lover, too. We've always had cats, horses, dogs, turtles, you name it. She can't even talk about it without getting choked up, and that had to have been over 10 years ago.

My sister did that too when she was about thirteen. Really sucked for her. She felt horribly guilty about it.

[clayton_e]

I'll be another one to chime in about a cell phone.

I washed it then called about getting a replacement under my cell phone insurance.

Fifty bucks.. down the drain.

They sent me an envelope to return it in. By the time the envelope came the phone had miraculously dried out and worked!!! Though it did have a bit of discoloration on the screen... but whatever.

The phone was canceled, though, and I had to send it back.


At least I was able to get my phone numbers off the thing...


I put two bad puns in there.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by Xema

The item was a package of frozen ground beef, which they wanted to thaw (this was before the age of microwave ovens). The dryer would do that, right?

Like that commercial they're playing-- "Turkey's defrosted!"

[EpicNonsense]

Cigarettes, pens, paper, wallets... they all make for a nice mess.

Have never put anything valuable inside of the washing machine. Yet.