The washing machine seems to have it in for my clothes. I can see it best on dark material, something like a film or sludge in streaks of flakes. I washed out a pair of slacks in the kitchen sink and found in the water floating grey particles or flakes.
So there is someplace in the washer that is holding on to this crud. Mr. D has taken off the agitator and nothing there. It is an old ( 6 years) simple machine, top loader, nothing special.
We are on well water but have a water soft system.
Any ideas?
Mine does that when I over fill it and it cant rinse well enough. 
Just a thought
What kind of detergent do you use? Powdered sometimes leaves a residue.
I do use powdered so will try liquid. Thanks
People tend to use too much detergent. It’s the reasoning, “If a little bit is good, more has GOT to be better!” Also, in an effort to save energy, we’ve started washing clothes in cooler water. Unless the detergent is specifically made to work in cold water, it might not be dissolving completely.
Fill the washer with the hottest water available. The pour cheap white vinegar through the detergent dispenser and the softener dispenser. Run the load as normal. You may need to repeat a second time.
Make sure your detergent is suitable for the water temperatures you select. If you are using more cold water washes, see if the detergent actually dissolves in the cold water straight from the tap. At this time of year, my cold water feels like it is coming directly from snow melt, and it’s hard to dissolve ANYTHING in water that cold! Liquid detergent will help a lot. Try using half as much detergent as you normally do. And make sure you aren’t stuffing the washer with too much. Split the big loads in half if necessary.
Reduce the amount of liquid softener by half. If you still have some deep-seated need to pour a full dose of softener into the machine, DILUTE it. Occasionally, take a softener vacation and use full strength white vinegar.
Hope that helps!
~VOW
You have the polarity reversed on your washing machine, so it’s making your clothes dirty. The same thing happened to my microwave oven. It started making ice cubes in 30 seconds.
Well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?
Clean the washing machine. We do this twice a year. Also, a cap full of white vinegar in the rinse will get more of the soap out. If you use too much then just rinse again. You’ll quickly figure out how much to add.
I had the same problem, until I switched to liquid. There still might be residue, but it doesn’t show.
Also, pour the soap (powdered or liquid) into the water before the clothes. So start the water, put the soap in, then start adding clothes.
This is a great tip that I always used on my toploading machine.
However, it won’t work with a front-loader.
To aceplace57, it would take more than a capful of vinegar to do any good. A load of wash/rinse water is around ten gallons or so. A cap of vinegar is probably around a teaspoon. If you want the vinegar to be effective, you’d need a good half-cup or more.
~VOW
I switched from powder detergent to liquid some years ago largely because of this. The powder didn’t always entirely dissolve, even by the end of the wash and rinse cycles, so I had some residue from that. Not to mention that the undissolved detergent didn’t contribute to the actual washing of my laundry either.
Now I pour the desired dose of liquid detergent into an empty peanut butter jar, and take that to the laundromat with me, along with a larger bottle full of plain hot water. I mix some water into the peanut butter jar and pour this, little by little, on the clothes as I load them in. (This is for top loaders.) For front loaders, just fill the peanut butter jar the rest of the way full with water to dilute the detergent some, then pour into the top when the time is right.
Yeah, it could just be too much detergent. You really don’t need near as much as people think you do. I used to use a full cap each load, because that’s how my parents did it, but I’ve since changed to just pouring a small amount directly into the washer, and my clothes still get just as clean, but it’s far less often I get this sort of residue problem. Rarely happens at all now.
Sometimes running an extra rinse cycle can help prevent this issue. My machine has this built in, but if not, you could always turn the knob back around to the rinse cycle once its done and start it again.
Another potential cause is if the spin cycle isn’t spinning. Sometimes I find mine doing this, I’ll open the lid and it’s not actually spinning (still sounds like it is, though), then I close the lid and reopen it and it’s started spinning again (and yes, it stops spinning when you open the lid, but there’s a very obvious difference besides that happening and opening it when there’s been no spinning at all). Yet another reason I make sure extra rinse is turned on, as it might not spin for the first, but I’ve never caught it not spinning on both rinse cycles.
Wow thanks for all your help.