TL;DR: Don't put your plastic shower curtains in the washing machine with other pieces of clothes.
Recently got a good advice here about how the inevitable molding of shower curtains doesn't have mean the end of their service. You can just throw them in the washer with some bleach and they'd be ready to reuse.
Before i knew this, I tried to spray the curtain with bleach and slowly wipe them down. Which didn't work for shit and I ended up inhaling bleach fumes.
Over the weekend, I was ready to make a quick trip to the coin laundry. I had the moldy curtains, I picked up the bleach and then I realized I can probably throw in a pile of used socks that I forgot to wash during the previous trip, and cleaning rags that never get a proper wash. And so I gathered the rags, the socks and put them in the laundry with the shower curtains. Coins in the slot, bleach in the machine, push the start button. Then I went sat on the dirty couch at the laundry shop and started to wonder if people ever pick up dates or find their s/o at a coin laundries.
Suddenly, the stern and friendly laundry shop owner walked up to me to ask if it was me who put shower curtains in one of his machines. I said yes and so he explained: "the shower curtain is uh plastic. The machine squeeze clothes but no dry the shower curtain. Ok? If I see you do I will say no but is uh okay. Next time.. No shower curtains next time ok? There's water all over floor when people put shower curtain" I didn't completely understand what he was saying but I got the gist of it. He doesn't want shower curtains in his machines. Fine. I come here often to give him and his wife some business so no biggie, I'll just go to a giant chain next time I wanna wash shower curtains. I've seen him give similar lectures to people who put sneakers in his machine.
30 mins wash is done, i go to unload and notice that the rags and the socks are drenched and still dripping wet. And then I understood what the owner was trying to tell me. When the machine does that final fast spin, the centrifugal force pushed out all the water from the wet clothes. The water then exits out of the tiny holes of the spinner's wall. So with two giant sheets of plastic in the machine, the tinier clothes like socks and rags get stuck in the shower curtain. And the final spin of the machine, that does the job of wringing, won't work on the clothes coz they're trapped in plastic. Hence it'll leave all the clothes drenching wet and you'd have to spend double the amount of coins on the dryer. So that's the story of my mediocre discovery over the weekend.
October 10, 2018 at 04:20PM
