The great thing about plastic shower curtain liners is that they keep the floor from getting soaked. A few years back I took a shower with just the curtain but no liner and afterward stepped out of the shower and into a quarter-inch of water. Whoops!
The problem with shower curtain liners is that after a while, the soap scum and mildew accumulates and they get pretty disgusting. They don’t generally get any other sort of damage, but I’ve never figured out a way to clean them, so my habit has been that I replace them every few years.
Two or three years ago Mom suggested that I should put it in the washing machine. Apparently the way you do this is to put the liner in the washing machine along with a couple big towels. Evidently the towels are supposed to supply some protection so the liner won’t get torn as well as some scrubbing action that removes all the grime.
My reaction was that towels or no towels, the liner would surely get torn to pieces, but at a cost of $5-10, they’re relatively inexpensive. So I decided to give it a shot. Just to be safe though, I did my laundry on a Friday night. That way, if the liner did get shredded, I could run out and get a new one right away rather than go to work without a shower.
Much to my surprise, the experiment was a success! The grime was gone and the liner was intact! I hung it back on the shower rod and the next morning took my shower as usual.
That was a couple years ago. After a while, the soap scum and mildew accumulated and the liner was once again disgusting. Having learned from that previous conversation that Mom was right about putting the liner in the washing machine, I decided to do it again around 10:00 this past Sunday evening.
Once again I put the liner in the washing machine with two towels. Afterwards, the grime was gone, I hung the liner back on the shower rod, and Monday morning I took a shower before going to work.
Of course, before I could take my shower, I first had to spend 20 minutes duct taping all the pieces back together so the floor would stay dry.