How I Clean Mold

Simple.  Safe.  Effective.

When I had the inspiration to do a post about mold I sent this text to a friend:

Can I come over and de-moldify your ceiling in an environmentally friendly way?

Okay, so ‘de-moldify’ isn’t a real word but seriously, who wouldn’t want to get a text like that?

I’m sure the reason she was so hesitant to agree to the project was because she read my text as: can I put pictures of your mold on the internet?

And that’s my point: fellow Juneauites, mold is nothing to be ashamed of.  You don’t need me to remind you that we live in a rain forest.  Look, you have mold, your neighbor has mold – just about everybody in this town is dealing with mold.  (I’ve been in enough houses to know…)

There are some preventative measures that can be taken against mold but this post is about cleaning it.  Here is my new favorite way to clean mold:

The 20 Mule Team brings back fond memories for me – when I was a kid my dad and I used it to preserve salmon eggs for bait – but it wasn’t until this year that I discovered how great it really is.

I suppose Borax gets ignored as a ‘strong’ cleaning agent because it is old (your grandmother probably had a box) and because it usually gets sold in the laundry aisle.

Here’s the thing: it’s really cheap, it’s really strong, and yet it has no bleach or phosphates.

From the Borax website:

“At high enough concentrations, borates themselves exhibit significant bacteriostatic and fungistatic activity. The effect is exploited particularly in hard surface cleaning.”

“Fungistatic” – how can anyone not like that word!

So to clean this ceiling I first mixed half a cup of Borax into half a gallon of warm water.  I just used cleaning cloths to apply this mixture and at the first swipe it took off most of the mold.

The texture on this ceiling was a but rough so there were some little nooks and crannies that the cleaning cloth just couldn’t get to.  I sprinkled some Borax onto a toothbrush and (gently!) got those last hold-outs.

There was a slight amount of staining but my friend was happy with the results.

For more information on my housecleaning services click here.