Said It Here

Why does a brand new washing machine leave soap in clothes?

Modern washing machines and certain products like Castile soap can cause detergent buildup that standard wash and rinse cycles fail to flush out. This leaves clothes soapy even after replacing the machine, running extra rinses, and verifying that the plumbing is hooked up properly.

Overview
People affected3 accounts across 2 forums
Workarounds found5 items attempted
Community agreement2 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

5 items+ Contribute

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Running the cycle again without adding any more soap
    Did this help you?
  2. 2
    Skipping adding any detergent for a few washes
    Did this help you?
  3. 3
    Changing to a different detergent or soap
    Did this help you?
  4. 4
    Switching back to modern detergents that use surfactants
    Did this help you?
  5. 5
    Using a mix of water and a few drops of dish soap for surface cleaning instead of vinegar mixtures
    Did this help you?
Tried another approach not listed above?+ Share your workaround ↑

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/CleaningTips2 people · September 2026

“Castile soap is wrecking your washing machine and there’s no cleaner in your surface cleaner. Just a heads up.”source ↗

michaelrxs · r/CleaningTips · 1 upvotes

“How would Castile soap wreck my machine?”source ↗

el_kilo_g · r/CleaningTips · 1 upvotes
r/appliancerepair1 person · September 2026

“So I had an old washing machine, wasnt getting the soap out of my clothes.”source ↗

“Buy a new one, installed it, new hoses, new everything, plug it in, calibrate it, run a cycle to make sure its working, then started a small load of towels, once it finished still soapy.”source ↗

“Low and behold STILL soapy! What do I do? Its a new washing machine, everything is hooked up properly, water is clearly going into the machine (you can hear it and tell the items were wet) I dont know what to try at this point. Can anyone offer suggestions? What can I be missing?”source ↗

SwampWitchCreations · r/appliancerepair

Where this came up

r/appliancerepairr/CleaningTipsappliance repaircleaninghome maintenancelaundrywashing machine

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