How to Get Rid of Mold in Your House?

Mold is something that no one wants to find inside of their home. It endangers the safe environment of your home, its structural integrity and it is a health hazard for you and the ones around you. You might be thinking since it is so dangerous then why not just remove it? Well, the problem with this kind of situation is that mold is not so easy to get rid of, especially if it has infested more locations inside of your house. The best way to deal with mold is before it ever appears by taking preventive measurements.

However, you are probably here reading this article because you already have a problem with mold, so you want to know how to permanently get rid of it. You want to avoid the damage it can cause to your nicely polished wooden floors or ruining your brand new paint on the walls. Not only that, but you also feel the air inside of your home feels much heavier because of the increased humidity.

Here are some things you need to keep in mind if you want to properly remove mold from the inside of your home.

Why does this happen?

It can be quite confusing why your home is suffering from such a problem since you constantly keep a clean environment. Unfortunately, sometimes cleaning is not enough as mold can easily find a place with the right conditions to grow.

Mold spores are something that can be found anywhere in the air. It is constantly outside, it is inside of your house, but it is not a problem until it finally develops into a fungus. These spores constantly look for dark places with enough moistures. So if you want to prevent it from ever developing into a problem, you will have to take care of all the moisture inside of your house.

Usual places where mold can show up

One of the most common places where this fungus can show up in the basement. This happens because basements are underground where the ground is much colder and the humidity is much higher which means that the fungus spores can easily find a place to grow.

Basement also often have some kind of a small leak that we don’t really bother to fix because “it’s just the basement”. No one really lives there, right? Well, sure, the basement is not a place for people to leave, but leaving mold to grow can make it easier for it to spread all over your home.
We recommend that you make sure every single leak inside of your basement gets fixed or if you recently had some kind of water damage, you should properly take care of it.

How to spot mold?

If you have never seen how this fungus looks like, it is actually pretty easy to spot. You would have to move some furniture around to check under them or on walls behind them. They show up as small black spots and they can often grow into giant black/green stains.

The first stage of the fungus is called mildew and is not as damaging as its final form, but it can easily reach that stage, so make sure you take the necessary precautions as soon as possible.

How to get rid of mold?

Depending on the severity of the problem, there are several ways you can deal with it. Our first recommendation for such an infestation is to call a professional as soon as possible. They can properly take care of any mildew you have at home, not just specific spots.

If your home is exposed to more than just a few feet of this fungus, then you should definitely get a professional who can use a bunch of toxic chemicals to kill all the spores inside. Keep in mind, during this cleaning process you will have to be outside of your home as it can be damaging to you and your family’s health too. According to GTARestoration, hiring a professional has proven to be the best way of Mold Removal in Toronto.

If you feel like there is no need of hiring a company to take care of your problem and you have enough time on your hands to clean everything by yourself, then here are the few products you can use.

Bleach

This would be our first option for this kind of an issue as it can destroy anything that you throw at it. Not only will it take care of the mildew problem, but it will also take care of the black stains on your walls. Take precautions when working on wood as too much bleach can damage the structure of it.

Hydrogen peroxide

This is our second option since it is not as toxic as bleach which means you won’t have to kick everyone out of your home when working on cleaning the mold. Of course, this is for much smaller areas of fungus, so it is not really the perfect solution. We recommend that you use this when working on more fragile materials such as wood or plastic.

Baking soda and sodium borate

This is the cheapest option that you can get from any local market. Mix baking soda with water and a bit of sodium borate (also known as borax) and then use a toothbrush to do some light scrubbing on areas where mildew has started to spread. This will not be as effective as some other products we mentioned, but it will do the job against smaller stains.

Mold on clothing and other similar fabrics

Unfortunately, when it comes to this kind of material, there might not be any kind of saving. If the fungus has already reached its final stage, the best thing you can do is to just throw away them. Even if that was your favorite couch, your health is much more important, so just throw it away.

However, if the problem does not come from serious water damage and it’s just from moisture, there is a good chance that it’s still mildew. You can remove mildew with the products we mentioned earlier with light scrubbing.