A washing machine works by using water with detergents to dissolve dirt (particularly fats) in the water, alongside enzymes and other agents to help loosen and break down the dirt. You need all the parts to get the clothes clean, but even just soaking them in water without anything else is a start.
The dryer purely dries the clothes by moving them in hot dry air, which draws out the water and then with a condenser to cool the air and catch the water. It does nothing at all for cleaning. It does also help soften clothes by the mechanical movement round and round, and you can put in a ball or laundry sheets as part of that.
A dirty sock mixed in with wet laundry in the dryer could even make the other clothes a bit dirtier by making the sock wet and dissolving the dirt and spreading it. The sock would be marginally cleaner in that situation but you’d have a whole load of slightly dirtier laundry.
You can hand wash items though. So put some warm water in a bowl, soak the sock and (with gloves!) use laundry detergent & rub it in to the soak and rinse. Or without gloves you can use simple bathroom soap, and rub it in and rinse. The rinsing is probably the hardest bit as you need to do it a fair bit to get all the soap/detergent out or it’ll feel wierd due to the residue when it dries. But it would clean the sock with some effort - thats what they used to do in the days before machines.
No, the dryer doesn’t do anything for cleaning.
A washing machine works by using water with detergents to dissolve dirt (particularly fats) in the water, alongside enzymes and other agents to help loosen and break down the dirt. You need all the parts to get the clothes clean, but even just soaking them in water without anything else is a start.
The dryer purely dries the clothes by moving them in hot dry air, which draws out the water and then with a condenser to cool the air and catch the water. It does nothing at all for cleaning. It does also help soften clothes by the mechanical movement round and round, and you can put in a ball or laundry sheets as part of that.
A dirty sock mixed in with wet laundry in the dryer could even make the other clothes a bit dirtier by making the sock wet and dissolving the dirt and spreading it. The sock would be marginally cleaner in that situation but you’d have a whole load of slightly dirtier laundry.
You can hand wash items though. So put some warm water in a bowl, soak the sock and (with gloves!) use laundry detergent & rub it in to the soak and rinse. Or without gloves you can use simple bathroom soap, and rub it in and rinse. The rinsing is probably the hardest bit as you need to do it a fair bit to get all the soap/detergent out or it’ll feel wierd due to the residue when it dries. But it would clean the sock with some effort - thats what they used to do in the days before machines.