Recognizing Cleaning Challenges

Mold growing inside your home can be a nuisance and a health concern, especially when it grows unnoticed for any length of time. Keeping your home's interior clean and dry is the key to keeping your home's air free of dangerous mold spores. Here are some tips to help you prevent and clean mold growth from your carpeting and in your bathroom.

Bathroom Cleaning

Your bathroom can be one of the most moisture-filled area of your home, especially when members in your household are constantly using your shower. This puts warm moisture into the air, which can travel throughout your home, adding excess moisture onto other surfaces. This can be a big problem with mold growth throughout your home if you live in a climate that already has a high humidity level in the air. Be sure you run your bathroom ventilation after showering and bathing to remove excess moisture from the air and to prevent it from moving into the rest of your home.

Mold spores are present everywhere, and they need the right type of warm, moist, and dark environment to grow. For this reason, it is important to keep surfaces in your home bathroom clean and dry along with providing good ventilation to the area. Hiring a cleaning business to keep your bathroom clean and wiped down frequently can help you fight off mold growth. This can be especially helpful when your life is busy with work, family, and other responsibilities.

A professional cleaning service will regularly clean surfaces in your bathroom, such as the bathtub, shower, and sink, to remove any mold spores and prevent them from growing. And for any mold growth that does occur, your cleaning professional can remove it with a suitable mold-cleaning solution. You can keep a spray bottle filled with white vinegar, which can kill 82 percent of mold species, and use it to spray down surfaces in your bathroom after bathing or showering.

Carpet Cleaning

Occasionally, your carpets can become wet without your knowing and can begin to grow mold. Mold growth in your carpets can be a bit tricky to remove, but by cleaning them properly to restore them, you can keep them in your home. But it is important to remove all mold growth and dry carpets as soon as possible. Also keep in mind, any surface area of mold growth ten square feet or more should be cleaned by a professional mold remediation company; otherwise, you or your home cleaning professional can take care of the issue safely.

Be sure to wear a breathing mask, rubber gloves, and eye protection to prevent inhalation of the mold spores and to keep any spores off your skin and out of your eyes. If the carpet is an area rug, remove it to outside your home for easier cleaning.

Choose the type of cleaner you want to use to clean and kill off the mold spores. You can use a mixture of water and bleach, water and borax, or straight white vinegar. If you choose to use bleach and water, test an inconspicuous area of your carpets with the solution first to make sure it does not discolor them. If it does, use borax and water or full-strength vinegar to clean them.

Combine one cup of borax or bleach with one gallon of water, or full-strength vinegar in your carpet cleaner bucket and spray this over the mold growth. Let it sit for up to 20 minutes, then use the carpet cleaner to remove the cleaning solution and the mold.

Place fans in the room directed onto the carpets to help them dry more quickly. If can also help to run a dehumidifier in the room, especially if you live in a humid climate. If your carpet is outside, let it sit in the sunshine until it is dry. The sun's ultraviolet rays will kill any remaining mold spores.