New to this. I’m overwhelmed

TLDR: Washer at home sucks. Overwhelmed by the thought of an entire day of cleaning it plus extremely tight budget. Previous tenants smoked inside and the smell takes over all of our clothes, hair, things, etc. Planned on using public laundry mat. Any tips on use of citric acid or other products? Or laundry in general for a poor single anxious mom?

Holy wow. I got to this sub bc Kismai commented in another sub. Have been scrolling for so long I don’t even remember which sub I started in. But anyway this has been a god send bc I struggle with laundry big time. I’m a broke single mom to an insane 4yr old girl that stains everything to its maximum. I work in healthcare and like to present myself to work clean. I have an LG top load washer that I got for dirt cheap from FB marketplace that absolutely does not clean our clothes(anymore? Ever? Idk). I know this bc I’ve noticed even the simplest stains of like kid snot or something remain on my nice work scrubs and the swamp a$$ smell stays to my gym sweats. So I’m washing my clothes a ridiculous amount of times.

This washer has never been great and it’s been fixed by my landlords handyman. Truthfully I don’t know that I can mentally prepare myself to take the time to deep clean my washer the way I’ve read. The previous tenants in my unit also smoked.. heavily AND they had cats. So all of our things smell like old smoke. Probably why my rent is so cheap, but it’s a roof over our heads blah blah blah. I’ve learned that I have been using the world’s most useless detergent: arm and hammer, no wonder it’s so cheap. I will be budgeting for tide+odor+oxi. I’m interested in the use of citric acid as well. I decided I no longer want to use my washer. It’s starting to unbalance on the spin cycle again (this was fixed previously by LL handyman) and I just know that there’s a ton of scrud in it bc I’ve noticed the little black flakes when I do a self cleaning cycles(not nearly often enough) There’s always little grains of sand and dirt sometimes possibly twigs and leaves that I find remain. It’s just a nightmare situation and our clothes are not being cleaned properly. After reading countless threads, looks like citric acid will create suds of leftover detergent, which I’m assuming laundry mat user don’t care about proper dosage and this would be an issue. Should I just avoid until I have my own washer and can properly take care of it?

Any other suggestions to fix my laundry life??? Yall are all amazing big brained and patient individuals

ETA: turns out the post I was reading with Kismai comment was actually r/laundry lol checks out