Last Friday, I decided to do the weekend laundry early because we decided to do an overnight at French Lick and I didn't want to come home to a mountain of dirty laundry. Everything was going great until my washing machine threw an error code.

First of all, new appliances are JUNK. My mom has had the same top load washing machine (NO LIE) since I was a kid. She even bought a second one to have as a backup in case this one ever takes a dump. I have no doubt that when she dies, one will be willed to my brother and one will go to me.

Anyway, the error code: E01. Thankfully, we already knew what it meant. I hand-washed clothes for about two weeks before one of our family friends said - oh that's a not-so-easy but totally fixable issue. It meant that something was stuck in the drain pipe. You have to take the entire back off the washing machine and dig out whatever is stuck.

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I'm incredibly blessed to have a handy husband. The only thing he won't do for me anymore is clean the hair clogs out of our drains because it was so disgusting and entirely comprised of my hair. GAG. So nasty. Well, this comes in a close second and if I don't remedy the problem, this will become my job too.

If you have a front-load washing machine, there is a lip right around the door. Apparently, little bits of stuff can get caught in that lip and make their way down the drain. And some of the things are not so little. Last time, he pulled out swimsuit top pads.

Friday, he left an old coffee container full of black water in the sink and asked me to identify the contents. I pulled them out and rinsed them off. There were SIX kids' masks that we lost at the beginning of 2020! I remember when my mother-in-law bought the pack for her and my daughter lost them at an alarming rate!

Now, here we are in the fall of 2021 and a year and a half of dirty water filtering through them has not been kind. They stunk sooo bad and were beyond stained. They were BLACK even after I bleached them. I ended up just pitching them because they were gross and she grew out of them anyway. When we came home from French Lick, I couldn't figure out why my house smelled like a dead animal. It was the masks in the trash that I'd forgotten to take out!

I asked my husband what to do to prevent this from ever happening again and he told me to get a mesh garment bag to wash masks, small dishrags, bra pads, and any other small item in to avoid this in the future.

Also, I'd like to point out that for everyone who thinks that the washing machine eats stuff -- YOU ARE NOT CRAZY! It does!

If you ever get an error code on your washing machine, look up what it means. If it's a drain error, search youtube for a video on how to clean out your make/model's drain. It can save you a call to the repairman! Or, if you are just missing some items and are curious, never hurts to try!

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