Mold: What to Toss / What To Clean Guide

If you are leaving mold/remediating this is the ultimate guide to what do with your stuff

This article is about what to do with your belongings that have been in a moldy house for some time and are therefore considered cross contaminated with mold spores, fragments, mycotoxins, mVOCs, and potentially bacteria from water-damaged buildings and bacterial VOCs.

I review the opinions of the top 5 experts in this field on what to keep, what to store, what to clean, what to toss, and how to clean the items that you keep properly.

I also share my opinion here as someone that went through severe mold exposure, became hypersensitive, and has worked with many other mold sensitive people as they leave their moldy homes.

Through coalescing and fact-checking the information from all the experts (centering the advice around the experts with true IEP credentials), *and* from sensitive people, I provide a more unified opinion that will leave you with a clear guide on what to actually do.

I also bring together new scientific research that I have not seen elsewhere on reducing mold and bacteria toxins from the water damaged building on your belongings which goes beyond the more typical “just clean up the mold spores” advice.

This add-on strategy is more attuned to what super sensitive folks need and why super sensitive folks (like how I was) still react/ed to a lot of our things even after cleaning the spores and mycotoxins off the items.

The cleaning strategies include many products that will work for most MCS folks. Not all products are suitable for all MCS folks.

(The cleaning strategies can also be used when you are buying used items or items from a moldy warehouse).

What we are not covering:

• How to clean items that have or had mold directly growing on/in them. Though this is covered in the book Mold Controlled.

• HT - this is not a mold, and is a completely different beast in terms of cleaning.

• Extreme mold avoidance protocols are briefly mentioned and contextualized, but are not centered here. Special cleaning of products that have briefly been in mold (like for one day) is not recommended. That kind of protocol made me worse not better.

Who is an expert in this?

Those who have education and training directly relevant to creating cleaning protocols for mold affected items are Indoor Environmental Professionals (IEPs) which includes those with training in mold remediation, mold cleaning, Industrial Hygienists, etc.

Medical doctors who speicalise in mold have experience from working with patients and usually have personal experience with mold themselves, but do not have actual education in anything related to mold cleaning.

I have experience working with mold sensitive people and went through extreme mold sensitivity and extreme avoidance myself. I have come through hypersensitivity (am no longer hypersensitive to mold).

Therefore, like the doctors cited in this article, I also have experience and a general education in how to do scientific research.

I use the top IEP’s advice for practical advice on cleaning while considering the experience from the most sensitive people.