My mom screwed up the washing and drying machine for me. She opened the garage door while both machines were open. Now, I am worried that a bug flew from the garage and went in both or one of the machines. I don’t want to use the machines anymore. What Do I do?

Sounds like some good exposure opportunity practice!

The best thing to do is to accept that it's a possibility that happened and do your laundry anyway. The point of the soap in the washer and the heat from the dryer is to get things clean and kill germs. I have severe contamination ocd and have to do my laundry in a communal laundry room that people leave a mess alllll the time so I'm not just saying this flippantly because I can imagine your anxiety right now. The best thing to do is not avoid the machines; instead, throw some laundry in and show your ocd who's in charge. Good luck!

I also have contamination OCD and laundry plays a big part of that. I’m very particular about laundry and prefer that I do it myself as a result. Given my living circumstances, I often have to use communal machines or shared family machines. I can’t say I know how you’re feeling exactly, but I can relate to the situation where a laundry/dryer machine suddenly feels unclean. There are some compulsion mechanisms I have used in the past to cope with this kind of situation but those are not healthy to give in to and just make the OCD worse. Like @ans87 said, don’t avoid the machines, try to accept the uncertainty, and show the OCD who is in charge. I know that’s not easy, I struggle with that myself on a more than daily basis.

Fungal laundry