I've been working on the washing machine for almost two weeks now . . . I noticed last week, for some reason, these brown and black flakes would end up in the water whenever I would try to do a load of laundry, and in spite of how many self-cleaning cycles I put the machine through, or how I would physically clean out all of the seals and crevices inside the drum, I come to find out the problem was much, much, much deeper than that . . . now the washing machine is almost in a state of disrepair, because after the removal of the agitator inside the drum, I discovered a disgusting build-up of gunk and sludge that would make Oscar want to buy this machine for his trashcan - this would explain why, even spite of the self-cleaning cycles, and cleaning out the seals and crevices myself, the flakes would still continue to just randomly show up in the water after the agitator begins spinning. Now, I'm doing my level best to clean up all of this gunky build up (and who knows how many years it's been building up to this point), meanwhile, the laundry itself has been piling up to the point I'm about to run out of clean linens, clean underwear, and my bed sheets are long overdue fora good washing. I'm hoping I can finally have all of this clean and put back together in the next day or two, because I desperately need to do laundry, and I am not going to use a public laundromat - especially in the middle of a pandemic.