Your home is full of wet areas and places where appliances are that use water in their operation. How well do you keep these areas up? Because if you don’t pay attention to basic cleanliness of the surrounding areas and the machines, you can end up with all sorts of short-term and long-term issues.
One of the biggest things that can happen if areas or machines stay damp for too long is that they can start to smell. Mold can be the most significant cause of odor, but there are also issues with mildew and just minerals getting stuck in pooling water. For a few examples, consider your washing machine, your shower area, your air conditioner, and your water heater.
The Washing Machine
After a while, washing machines can start to smell. Because they are constantly in use, and always drawing water from your plumbing, some components can potentially never get a chance to dry. If you don’t figure out how to clean and flush some of these parts, your washing machine may end up not being able to clean your close anymore, and instead will just make them end up smelling worse. Don’t let this happen to you!
The Area Around Your Tub and Shower
Another area that starts to get smelly and grimy quickly is the places around your tub and shower. You can use tub and shower cleaner daily, and typically you’ll never end up with a problem. Even doing things like scrubbing over the damp areas with vinegar and baking soda occasionally can keep smells and bad stains down. But ignore your bathroom at your peril. Assuming that areas will dry out on their own and stay clean is the worst thing that you can do to try and keep your bathroom fresh.
Air Conditioners
Before you put your air-conditioners away for a season, make sure to clean out all of the water that might be in it. Condensation moves through the unit when it is in use, and if you don’t drain it out and make sure that all of the components are dry before you store it, you can end up with a terrible smelling airflow when you turn it back on next year.
Water Heaters
With water heaters, it’s not so much about the smell as it is about the operation. If minerals from your waterline start to collect at the bottom near the heating element, heating efficiency can be severely curtailed. That’s when you end up with hearing that bubbling crackling sound. The heating element has to work past all of the sediment that has gathered. Look up how to flush your water heater, and find out how often you should do it for your particular model to avoid this problem.