We have a front-loader that’s 10 years old and still runs like a champ. It also cleans clothes better than any top loader I’ve ever had. We wash the door and door seal inside and out with hot soapy water and then run a tub clean cycle with dedicated washing machine cleaner tablets through it once a month or so. It has little drain holes around the base of the door seal that we are likewise pretty religious about cleaning out (a brush designed to clean reusable straws works well for this). We clean out the hair filter whenever we remember to do so which is probably once every 6 months or so. Once a year during spring cleaning I’ll pull out the soap drawer completely and scrub it with some soapy bleach water. This equates to maybe 5 minutes of maintenance a month, with an extra 10 minutes whenever we remember to clean the hair filter and another 10 minutes once a year for the soap drawer. What really makes a difference is keeping both the door to the washer and the soap drawer wide open when not in use. This allows it to dry out between uses so mold and mildew won’t grow in it. Washers that are used by people who don’t do this are absolutely revolting – usually caked with layers of black mold and reeking of the most putrid swamp imaginable. How their owners don’t notice it is beyond me.
My only complaint with my washer is it’s damn slow: a heavy wash using a prewash and extra rinses using hot water takes 2 1/2 hours. A regular wash on “light soil” setting, which is fine for day-to-day office wear, still takes an hour and 20 minutes. It’s an LG, FWIW.
I have one of those and used it extensively when I lived in apartment and had to wash clothes by hand in the bathtub. It does work well but the clothes by no means come out dry – they still need to be hung up to actually dry. But it certainly works better than trying to wring them out by hand. I keep it for when I either need to prewash something really grungy by hand and then remove most of the gross wash water or for when I do tie dyeing.
How is this different from the spin cycle of a washing machine? I looked at the listing, and it’s awfully small, just 13" outside diameter (so I’d guess the inside diameter of the spinning drum is maybe 9 inches?). At that size, 3200 RPM won’t buy you a lot of centripetal acceleration, which is the thing that matters for slinging water out of your laundry.
I just checked our LG washer, and the drum is a full 26 inches in diameter and spins at about 1100 RPM, giving about the same acceleration as the Panda spinner you linked to. It looks to me like the Panda is only intended for people who don’t own a washing machine with a spin cycle.
It isn’t. If you wash clothes with conventional washer and remove the freshly-spun clothes from it and put in the Panda spinner and let it do its thing, the clothes will come out essentially the same level of dampness. It doesn’t actually dry them.
Precisely. It’s designed to remove water from clothes that have been washed by hand or are otherwise literally sopping wet. It saves them from having to be wrung out by hand as well.
My DIL had a front loading washing machine and hated it. Our laundry room is so small that there is no way to fit in both machines as front loaders. They certainly still do sell top loading washers.
I’ve never had a top-loading dryer, but I grew up using top-loading washing machines (and my first house had one as well). I find front-loading washing machines so much easier. I can put a basket in front of it, scoop the laundry out into the basket, move the basket over to the dryer, and dump it in there. My top-loading washing machines required me to bend over, reach down, and pull things up and out. They were a lot more effort to deal with. It would be worse if I had both a washer and dryer like that.
And this is the punishment for being lazy. And i like being able to be lazy.
I have a top loading washing machine i bought more than 20 years ago that’s still going strong, and the total maintenance has been… I really can’t think of anything I’ve ever done to clean it care for it.
I do think the front loaders work well, and are gentler on the clothes. I go to a laundromat about once a year to use their giant front loader to wash the quilt my sister made for me. But when my washer dies i plan to buy a new top loader if i can.
Not necessarily. Some washers just don’t have the greatest spin cycle, whether because they don’t spin long enough or fast enough, or the load is too big and potentially unbalanced. So a separate spinner can go as long as you need it to and can wring out more moisture. Also, what washers don’t have a spin cycle?
It was definitely a joke. I think it’s great the care you take of your laundry machines.
The joke (I’ve been bombing lately) was that – even though it probably took you longer to create that post than it does to actually do the routine maintenance – it sounded like a lot of very detailed work.
So … maybe the kind of toothbrush-cleaning that an amphetamine user might enjoy.
But … looks like it bombed. I’m going back to the drawing board for my humor
Since this thread has been reanimated, I will tell you the latest. First, if you google “top loading dryer”, there are lots of hits. It turns out that “top loading dryer” is defined by the appliance as meaning a front loading dryer with controls on the top. Hows that for creative nomenclature. As far as I can determine, there is no actual top loading dryer made today, or at least none sold in Canada.
Be that as it may, the arrangement of our laundry room, into which we have stuffed a small chest freezer, doesn’t really lend itself to a front loading dryer. I guess we could secrete the freezer elsewhere, but it would be awkward. What about stackable washer/dryer? Theoretically possible, but it has all the disadvantages of front-loading washers and also would destroy the shelf space currently about the machines. Or above one of them anyway.
About two years ago, the dryer started squealing. We got a repairman who said a bearing had worn out. He was able to get the part and replaced it. Cost over $300, but my wife felt it was worth it for all the reasons above. Well, three days ago it started squealing again. The same repairman is coming sometime within the next hour to replace the bearing again. Damn. I would replace the whole machine if I could. I can assume only that the problems with top loading dryers were so difficult that they are just not made any more. Where is Ernö Rubik just when we need him?
I had a top-loading washer and got rid of it for a front loader. Very happy with the choice (to be fair, the new washer I got was in a better tier than the previous washer).
Those are a thing. Common in countries that mostly have small apartments, such as Japan. But you can get them in other countries including the US and Canada.
I have an “agitator less” top loader and it takes 45 minutes to wash 3-4 pieces of clothing on the lowest water setting … the one before it had a “fast wash cycle” it took 15
remember that joke about George Washingtons’ antique axe that had 3 handles and 2 blades? that’s our 20-year-old dryer … the only thing original on it is the cover panels and the frame … its insides have been completely replaced every 5 or so years … as long as they make parts for it …
