So I got into it with a house guest that found out today that I regularly machine wash the cloth/fleece bedding I use for our ratties. Apparently the fact that I do this is "Disgusting" and when I disputed his insistence that this is (even after cleaning) tantamount to making everyone else who uses it afterwards wash their clothes in rat shit themselves he felt justified in ridiculing me as nobody would ever agree with me. I don't want to diminish this as the cloth was quite heavily soiled (overdue for changing) and by the time I got their rats best shook out there were bits left stuck between the more soiled pieces. That being said I don't want to overstate the point. This is stuff that's shaken out as best I could as it's a tangled mess going into the washer and not a case of me simply dumping the entire bottom contents of a cage into the washer. So we're talking some wicker from a little bit they chewed apart, dust from their food hoarding (one of ours is a lil prepper) and it absolutely had some of the poop still stuck to/in it after being shaken out. This is my cleaning routine: Shook out, picked the worst of it out and washed in a high water amount on their own with detergent. I then remove the bedding, throw it in the dryer for the large pieces and air dry the loose ones. Then I remove any solid pieces left in the drum and run an empty rinse cycle to wash away any residual particulates. After this is all done the drum is wiped out one last time and is otherwise as clean as it was before use. This person felt so revolted by this that they felt justified going to my in-laws and asking to use their laundry because evidently using the washer is now unthinkable (or something?) This complicates things as my in-laws are also my landlords and are now coming to inspect the washer as if this represents a potentially catastrophic risk to the machine. So yeah: Is machine washing anything with rat poop on it "disgusting" or is my insistence that washing machines are built well enough to wash away some rat turds without consequence if cleaned afterwards reasonable? TL;dr Guy that's staying with me found out I machine wash my rat bedding and was so revolted he felt justified in risking my relationship with my landlords/in-laws over it so he wouldn't be inconvenienced by having to use a laundromat.