Are you sniffling and sneezing during the winter and you don’t know why? It could be that you have an allergy to certain molds. Once in a while there’s a mold problem in a house and it’s the cause of allergies—kind of like dust. It can be controlled, though, even cleaned. Perhaps you’re not suffering from mold allergies, but you’re looking at your bathroom wondering how it turned into a science project so quickly? Or perhaps you’re considering shaving the growths around your faucets at the same time you take care of your personal hygiene.

During the winter months people have one of two problems: either the air in their home is too dry and it’s causing problems, or the air in their home is too moist, and is causing mold to grow. During the summer months we have problems with excessive mold growth because of a higher relative humidity. If that’s the case, you may want to check out how to get rid of humidity. This article will cover cleaning up the mold and keeping your home free of mold.

How Best to Clean and Control Mold

Start with your bathroom, where mold grows like a teenager on steroids.

We use vinegar. It’s good stuff. You’ll want to spray vinegar in all the places where mold grows most easily. This includes places like the sealing underneath your faucets, on your shower curtains, in the grout of your tile floor, or near the edges of the linoleum, if that’s what you have for flooring. People sometimes call this mildew. It’s pretty much the same thing. I mop our bathroom floor with vinegar often.

Mold that hides in other places around your home can be gotten rid of just as easily as the mold in your bathroom.

Your kitchen, for example, is the perfect place for mold to grow because remnants of food and the dark space in cupboards and the moisture are what mold thrives on. If you have a dish drainer drying thing like we do, spray that down with vinegar every night, as well as your cutting boards and anything else that comes into contact with food on a regular basis.

If it’s hot and humid out, use an air conditioner to help get rid of mold.

Mold loves the humidity; in fact, it’s practically necessary in order for mold to grow. Dust mites, too, actually. Some people say around 65%-70% relative humidity is necessary for mold to grow. You’re going to put that air conditioner to good use because it’ll control the humidity in your home during the summer months. You’ll want to buy a hygrometer (or any other way to measure relative humidity), and keep your home between 30%-50% relative humidity, or RH.

If it’s cold outside, you’ll want to use a dehumidifier to control mold growth in the home instead of an air conditioner.

Duh. Well, not everyone has a dehumidifier. Honestly, we don’t need one. It’s quite dry in our apartment, thanks to the hardwood floors and our Minnesota winter. But if you need a dehumidifier, you may want to splurge and get one that measures relative humidity, to keep your home at an RH that is both comfortable and prohibitive to mold growth. 30%-50%, remember? Something like the Eva-dry at Amazon may work, but you’ll want to probably get something a bit larger if you’re going whole-home instead of closet or bathroom.

Because of carpet’s natural tendency to soak up dirty and moisture, carpeting is poses the greatest challenge when getting rid of mold.

You have a couple of choices here; you can either take your carpeting out and replace it with hardwood flooring (which can kill several birds with one stone: carpet beetles, dust mites, fleas, etc.), or you can dust your carpet with baking soda on a regular basis, letting it sit for several hours and then vacuuming it up.

Mold Soaps and Mold Killing Cleaners

As I’m certain you’re aware of, there are a lot of mold and mildew products on the market today. The latest trend in mold and mildew control is the shower and bathroom sprays that use once you’re done taking a shower. These products work just fine, but they act on the same principle as the vinegar spray I mentioned earlier. Vinegar can substitute just about any bathroom cleaning product sold today, with the exception of heavy duty abrasive cleaners like Comet. If you don’t believe me, throw your shower curtains in the washing machine with bottle of distilled white vinegar and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Don’t get me wrong, these anti-fungal shower sprays work great, but you have to be wondering what those chemicals are doing to our environment. Recently I’ve been working on an article about cleaning tile with pure, crystallized citric acid.

Best Natural Mold Removal

Ecover Surface and Glass Cleaner

This cleaner uses plant-based alcohols to do its dirty work on mold, mildew, and soap scum. It may not be labeled as a bathroom cleaner specifically, but this stuff really will do the trick, and may even substitute one of those big brand shower sprays. I really do like the Ecover line of cleaning products and I use their Lemon and Aloe Vera dishwashing liquid religiously. A lot of their products use natural acids, like citrus.

Seventh Generation Bathroom Cleaner

This doesn’t use acid to kill mold and remove soap scum. Instead they use hydrogen peroxide and citrus oils to help kill germs and mold, and pick up soap scum and other bathroom stains. I wouldn’t use this as a substitute for a shower spray treatment, but it’s certainly strong enough to solve your mold problems on random bits of tile, floorboards, linoleum, and such. We’d recommend the lemongrass scented Sevent Generation cleaner, sold at Amazon.

Vinegar

Good old vinegar, otherwise known as acetic acid, is the way to go. You can’t go wrong with this stuff. Sure it smells kind of strong when you use it, but that smell goes away in no time, leaving a bacteria-free, mold-free, mildew-free, water stain-free surface behind. It’s perfectly natural, biodegradable, and is comparable to dirty in terms of cost.

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