Q: Does the app Washing Machine 2014 work?

Paula,

In most cases third party utilities to enhance OS X are not necessary. What are  you trying to acheive with a "cleaning" app?

The Mac OS doesn't need to be 'cleaned'. Washing Machine and other similar programs exist mostly for the peace of mind of former Windows users who found such programs useful. Because Windows had a structure called the Registry periodic cleaning did indeed tend to make the system more stable and faster.

Far as I can see Washing Machine has a couple useful functions and one potentially dangerous one. The dangerous function is removing 'unneeded' languages. This can result in an unusable program. The useful functions are finding duplicate files and installation files that can be deleted. But there are less expensive programs that do the same.

Specifically, what junk is that?

How much free space on your Disk?

How slow is it?

See:

Mac Maintenance Quick Assist,
Mac OS X speed FAQ,
Speeding up Macs,
How to Speed up Macs,
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance,
Mac troubleshooting: What to do when your computer is too slow,
Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up,
Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines,
Maintaining OS X, 
Five Mac maintenance myths and
Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X for information.

Paula,

The issue may be as simple as your computer is starved for RAM. Please click the Apple symbol in the upper left of your display and click "About this Mac." Then tell us how much RAM is installed. Also if you could tell us what year the iMac is that would be helpful too.

The 2007 iMac can run Mavericks but it lacks both the RAM and CPU speed to run it well. I had a 2007 iMac with the maximum amount of RAM and it even though I did a clean install of Mavericks and then freshly installed the important software doing no migration at all, the computer was not up to it. It did okay with Lion, not quite so well with Mt Lion.

My advice? Forget Mavericks until you buy a new computer.

That is your problem, 2GB is the absolute minimum to run Mavericks.  Your machine can accommodate 6GB of RAM, I would recommend that you upgrade to 6GB. If you are in the US then contact either OWC (www.macsales.com) and they can help you or contact Crucial.com. Installing the RAM is a 10 minute process and OWC even has instructional videos to show you how simple it is.Literally all you need is a small screwdriver.

Your mac is self sustaining and very very rarely if ever needs an Application like the PC would need. With Apple you plug and Play and Enjoy. Upon occasion you might notice an issue that concerns you that is when you come on the communities for an answer.  From what you posted you have 2/3rds of your HD space still available. Your Internet Speed is a little slow but like all things we buy what we can afford.  If you are paying for faster speed then call the 800 number furnished by your provider, some have a habit of throttling down speed in peak hours which is of course wrong. You should get what you pay for.

Donald Morgan wrote:

Your Internet Speed is a little slow but like all things we buy what we can afford.

Hnnmm! I don't consider 28.51 mb/s to be slow. I'm on RoadRunner w/turbo boost and get 22.45 Mbps, which is way faster than most basic cable speeds.

Your Internet Speed is a little slow but like all things we buy what we can afford.

Really.

Mine is 9 mb/s. And I could easily afford to pay more if it was available.

And, @ Paula:

You really need to either increase your RAM or seriously consider a newer computer. I was barely able to run Mountain Lion (or Mavericks) on 4 GB of RAM - it is simply not worth the slowness, crashes, panics, etc.