5 Spring Cleaning Chores for Your Laundry Room

Apr 21, 2024

Use this checklist to spiff up your washer and dryer, and the room they live in, too

It’s a room that works hard. It’s where all your clothes and linens go in dirty and leave spotless. But as efficient as a washing machine and dryer are at removing grime from sight, remnants ultimately build up in filters, gaskets, and ducts. So now’s as good a time as any to show your workhorses a little TLC.

And that goes beyond just tending to the machines, especially if your laundry room also happens to be a dumping ground for all your cleaning supplies, the kids’ soccer gear, the giveaway pile, your dog’s toys … you get the picture. We’ve got five quick tips for cleaning up your act—at least in the laundry room.

Sure, you clean your dryer’s lint trap before or after every load, but do a deeper clean once in a while to ensure that air flows freely. A blocked lint trap requires the dryer to run longer, adding wear and tear to the machine. Use a lint trap cleaning kit to get into the slot and capture all that loose lint.

Laundry rooms, especially the ones in between the garage entrance and the living space, can get overwhelmed with odds and ends or things that don’t belong there. First things first, purge what you don’t need—fabric softeners, scent boosters, and color enhancers, just to name a few—and move random objects that have a more sensical home elsewhere. For instance, do you really need your wallet, keys, and mail scattered on top of your washing machine?

For everything that’s left, find manageable storage solutions that help cut down on clutter. Maybe an over-the-door rack makes sense, which can help wrangle smaller laundry tools, like a sewing kit, a lint roller, and wool dryer balls.

If you have cabinets, get transparent, lidless bins with integrated side handles to hold your detergent and cleaning supplies. The bins make these bottles easier to access and they’ll also catch any leaking fluids.

Your front-load washing machine’s drain pump filter catches lint, hair, and small objects such as coins and hairpins as water drains from the drum. Over time, the filter can get clogged, causing your washing machine to not drain properly. A telltale sign is when your clothes are wetter than normal after a cycle finishes or the cycle takes longer than usual. In some cases, the washing machine might not spin properly, become noisy, or vibrate excessively. To prevent all of this, clean out your machine’s drain pump filter following the manufacturer’s manual instructions. The steps will more or less look like this:

Remove any potential blockages in your dryer vent system at least once a year. Disconnect your dryer from the power source, and if it’s a gas dryer, also turn off the gas valve. Slide the dryer out from the wall and disconnect the duct from the back of the dryer. Vacuum both the dryer and the duct, as much as you can access. Where possible, separate the duct into shorter sections for better access.

To minimize mold in your front-load washing machine, run an empty load on the hottest setting with 1 cup of bleach. When it’s done, wipe away moisture inside the door and on the rubber gasket, gently pulling back the gasket to clean any residue.

Perry Santanachote

Perry Santanachote is a multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports. She has been with CR since 2019, covering nothing in particular. Not having a beat allows her to work on whatever’s trending—from parasite cleanses to pickleball paddles. Perry is a main producer of Outside the Labs content at CR, where she evaluates products in her tiny Manhattan apartment.