Does your FL washer hold your clothes hostage?

[RunnerDuck]

The thing I hate most about my washer - when it is done with the final spin it then gently flops the clothes back and forth for 2 minutes. Why does it do this? It locks the door and I can't unlock it. I have tried unplugging the machine, I have tried hitting pause/cancel - it will not unlock the door. When I try to foil it it ends up taking longer than 2 minutes to get it to unlock. Drives me crazy. Does your front loader do this? Is it a front loader thing or does my machine just suck? (It's a fridgidaire gallery series) My husband says maybe it fluffs the clothes and makes them easier to tumble in the drier but I don't know, I think I am capable of peeling them out as is.

[edurnemk]

Yes it does that, it's the same model BTW. I think my mom's does the same thing and it's a different model, but also Frigidaire.

[RunnerDuck]

Does it drive you crazy?? Can you think of any logical reason for it?

[edurnemk]

No, I can't figure it out. I just wait a few minutes to go into the laundry room after I know it's done. I hate standing there waiting for it to unlock the door.

[sariana]

I have no idea why, but my Whirlpool does this too. It doesn't bother me at all, though. I consider it part of the cycle. Why do you need to open the door sooner? It's not finished yet.

Mine beeps when it is finished, so I don't have to wonder. It also displays the cycle time right from the start, including these extra minutes at the end.

[hillview]

Mine does this but I don't mind. I am not sure why it does it -- it does it in the beginning of the wash and I sort of assumed it was to evaluate how much it has in it so it can determine how much water to put in? At the end, I don't know.
/hillary

[RunnerDuck]

Maybe it's weird that it bugs me so much.

I just feel like with laundry for 5 people and two in cloth diapers I want to keep it moving. Drives me nuts to have to wait 2 minutes to move on for no particular reason. It's clean, it's spun, why does it have to flop around??

[pastrygirl]

My Bosch does that, too. I have no idea why.

[twowhat?]

We have a Frigidaire too and YES it does this and it takes EVEN longer to wait for the door to unlock if you try to cancel it!!! So I've learned to just let it finish on its own. And yes, the tumbling is to "shake out" the clothes a little before they go in the dryer, because FL spin at much higher speeds than top-loaders, so the clothes are more mashed together after a spin.

I'm at least glad that it will unlock quickly at the START of a cycle - if I start a cycle and find a stray sock within the first couple min, I can hit cancel, it will unlock right away, and then I can toss in the stray sock.

eta: this drives me nuts too. I'd rather it finish a few min faster because I always shake out clothes anyway before they go in the dryer!

[elbenn]

I think the reason for it is to check whether the clothes have too much water in them. If they do, then it will do another spin of the clothes.

[RunnerDuck]

We have a Frigidaire too and YES it does this and it takes EVEN longer to wait for the door to unlock if you try to cancel it!!! So I've learned to just let it finish on its own. And yes, the tumbling is to "shake out" the clothes a little before they go in the dryer, because FL spin at much higher speeds than top-loaders, so the clothes are more mashed together after a spin.

I'm at least glad that it will unlock quickly at the START of a cycle - if I start a cycle and find a stray sock within the first couple min, I can hit cancel, it will unlock right away, and then I can toss in the stray sock.

eta: this drives me nuts too. I'd rather it finish a few min faster because I always shake out clothes anyway before they go in the dryer!

Thank you !!!!! I was begining to think OK I know I am crazy but am I even crazier than I thought because this doesn't bother anyone else? LOL Yeah it will let me pause/open the door once the water has started but it won't let me cancel this part of the cycle. It's not like it ever decides "Wait, I have to do something else, I'm not really done" so I just don't see WHY I can't cancel it. It's will get fluffed up in the dryer anyway. It's not like you're going to remove the solid brick of clothes and transfer it in one piece, it has to go a little at a time.

[twowhat?]

I think the reason for it is to check whether the clothes have too much water in them. If they do, then it will do another spin of the clothes.

Ohhhh this totally makes sense too.

[RunnerDuck]

But has anyone ever actually witness it starting to spin again? It never does anything after this stage. I have never seen it do an additional spin.

[twowhat?]

But has anyone ever actually witness it starting to spin again? It never does anything after this stage. I have never seen it do an additional spin.

Now that I think about it, yes I have see this. I washed a picnic blanket (waterproof on one side) so the spin didn't get all the water out, and after re-tumbling it was obvious more water was coming out that was trapped behind the waterproof side so it spun again.

[Multimama]

My front loader used to do this too and it was some obscure European brand. My DH said it was a safety feature to make sure that the inside of the machine wasn't too hot when you opened the door. I have no idea if that's true, but since my DS was helping me with the laundry I didn't get annoyed when I thought it was a safety feature. :)