Have you seen green or black mold growing in your home and not thought very much about it? Maybe you didn’t like the smell, so you clean it up when you see it, but you may not realize what a serious problem mold can be.
It’s Bad for Your Health
Did you know that having mold in your home can actually make you sick? People who become ill easily or who have weak immune systems will probably be the most susceptible to health problems caused by mold in the home. Mold can cause allergic reactions, and it can create cold and flulike symptoms. If there are mold spores floating around in the home (these are invisible),
then these can cause runny nose, stuffiness, sneezing, coughing, itchiness, and even keep you from sleeping.
If the mold problem is bad enough, it could affect your mood, making you irritable, tired, and even depressed, in some cases. Because you may not be getting decent sleep due to the mold problem, that can affect how you feel and your emotional state. It can damage your immune system and make you more susceptible to illness and disease.
Are you getting some idea now of why it’s so dangerous to have mold in your home?
It Damages Your Home
Mold doesn’t just look nasty; it can also eat through some building materials in your home. Mold creates a wet, somewhat corrosive effect that corrupts the integrity of wood and other items that could be water damaged. Mold can get deep into your building materials, making it very hard to remove. In many cases, when mold has damaged wood, the wood has to be destroyed entirely. It’s no longer usable and structurally stable.
So, unless you get rid of those infested materials, the mode will be present and continue to grow and spread throughout your home, causing additional damage.
If you have your home inspected for mold, you may be advised to completely remove some building materials that have been affected by it. Because mold is so difficult to remove, it’s often better to completely eliminate places where it grows then to try to keep fighting it.
The Smell Can Affect Your Social Life
Have you ever stepped into someone’s home and been hit by an unpleasant smell? Maybe it was the garbage, rotten food, the smell of animals in the home, or mold. Whatever it was, it probably made you think about not staying there very long. You might have started to look for excuses to leave without hurting the other person’s feelings.
That may be the same way people feel when they come into your home and they smell mold. If mold is present, it can create a pervasive smell that people are going to notice. You may stop noticing it after a while since you live there and you become accustomed to it, but visitors might pick it up right away and start looking for a reason to leave.
If your home becomes known as “the musty smelling place”, then you may have trouble getting people to spend time there. Your home may become a pariah rather than a social scene, and that’s not going to go well for you.
What Can You Do?
Your immediate reaction to seeing mold in the home may be to just wipe it up. That can get rid of mold at a surface level and make it look like it’s gone away for a little while. But what you will probably find is that the mold comes back again.
Mold is incredibly resilient, and it can be tough to get rid of it completely. Even when you wipe it away and spray with cleaners at the spot where it was growing, there may still be mold spores in your home. They are so small that you won’t see them, so they can infest your home again very easily.
Cleaning up the mold can be a very long and involved process, and it may be to your benefit to hire expert cleaning crews or mold remediators to clean it up for you. They can do a more thorough job and get rid of the mold where you don’t even realize it’s growing. They know how to look for mold in out-of-the-way places and clean it more effectively and thoroughly.
Ventilate Your Home
It helps to provide proper ventilation in your home. Mold grows in places where water can pool and not dry up very quickly. If water is allowed to stay in your home, mold may start to take root there. With proper ventilation and good airflow in your home, water will dry up faster and mold won’t be able to grow as easily.
Allowing fresh air into your homes can help destroy mold growth and prevent it from occurring in the first place. Letting in natural sunlight can also kill mold, as it needs a dark, damp place to grow effectively.
Dry up Water Fast
Mold has to have water to survive, so drying up any leaks or spills as soon as possible helps prevent mold from growing. This also gives the mold that’s already in your home very little substance to draw from and keep spreading. If you want to keep your mold problem under control, you need to make sure you have no water leaking anywhere in your home and also clean up spills as soon as they happen.
Check periodically for leaks or for water that may be pooling under and behind appliances. Water can sometimes pool under your faucets and below your sinks, so check for leaks there as well. Mold loves to look for dark places to grow.
Mold can also grow easily in the bathroom, particularly in the sliding door track of your shower. Clean that area regularly, drying it up and spraying cleaners that kill mold. This will help keep the mold problem under control and keep your home smelling nice.