The mold remediation of our home is just about complete. All active mold has been removed and affected areas have been patched, drywalled, painted, etc. All air ducts have been cleaned, and the entire house has been fogged to kill any remaining mold in the air and on surfaces, furniture, etc. The only wall to wall carpet we had was on the stairs, and that has been removed.
Now we are entering phase two, which is remediation of our clothes, bedding, etc. This task felt incredibly daunting to us, to the point of paralysis. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, when you have mold in your home, it does not remain isolated to the place where it’s visible. Invisible spores are released into the air and circulate throughout your home. Which means every single thing you own is touched by mold to a certain degree. If you are healthy, this probably isn’t too much of a problem, but if you suffer from mold illness, commonly referred to as CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome), any mold is a problem and needs to leave.
Since I am tired most of the time and suffer from brain fog a lot of the time, I became overwhelmed and more or less shut down any time we discussed dealing with our stuff. And for this reason, we have been lax on this front. And when I say “we” I mean “me” because I led the charge on inaction.
Thankfully, my husband is a man of action, and he decided we needed to get over ourselves and figure this out. Also thankfully, by “we” he meant “him”, as he could see I wasn’t getting anywhere. He got a bone in his teeth and went deep on research and developed an action plan based on an evidence-based mold remediation protocol developed by Dr. Close. You can learn about about it here.
This is what we (ok, mostly my husband) are doing:
- Post-remediation, my husband ran diffusers with an essential oil blend called Combat Blend for 24 hours in each room of the house in order to catch anything the remediators might have missed, or anything still lingering in the air, which can happen after remediation. This would also kill any mold on drapes, furniture, etc. He did this while I was away, as there was a chance the oil could give me a bad detox reaction, which unfortunately, it did when I returned home. It was severe, but that’s a story for a different time. My husband did the homework, so you don’t have to. This is the best diffuser, and this is the essential oil. For you Young Living essential oil people, this is equivalent to Thieves Blend, but less expensive. My husband purchased the diffusers and essential oil from Diffuser World. Cheesy name, I know, but they are extremely knowledgable about essential oils and mold remediation, and are very familiar with Dr. Close’s protocol.
- We add one ounce of a product called EC3 Laundry Additive to every load of laundry. EC3 is natural, non-toxic, and kills mold.
- Once per month, we will use EC3 Mold Solution Concentrate to spray down anything that can’t be washed: drapes, area rugs, bedding, throw blankets, plush furniture, dry clean only clothing, etc. The diffusing covered most of this, but we will hit it with EC3 on an ongoing basis for prevention.
- We ordered this 100% organic, non-toxic mattress from a company called Avocado Green. I’ve never ordered a mattress in the mail, but it was rated number one by Consumer Reports, and there are literally thousands of very positive reviews on the website. Also, they have a very generous return policy — one year. This not an ad, by the way. Just sharing my rationale. I’m not going to lie, it was expensive by the time we added in the mattress pad, base, pillows, pillow covers, etc., but we decided it was worth it, as I spend a solid eight hours per day in bed. And we know our previous mattress has been in several houses with water damage (and therefore mold), so we decided it had to go.
- Since I was diagnosed with CIRS about a year ago, we have run air purifiers in every room of our home, and will continue to do so. There are many air purifiers in many price ranges. My husband researched this heavily, and settled on a brand called Blueair. We do the product line called Blue. You need different sizes based on the sizes of your rooms. My husband decided on Blueair because it got good ratings, and was middle of the road price-wise.
- My husband changes our air duct filters every 30 days whether they look dirty or not.
- We are going to institute an ongoing schedule for diffusing essential oils. Dr. Close recommends eight hours per room once a month, but we will need to figure out how to make that happen now that we know it makes me temporarily sick.
Ugh.
What a process, right? But for the first time since I was diagnosed, I feel like we have a handle on how to keep our environment safe for me, and I can only hope it leads to more healing than I’ve experienced in the past year, which frankly, hasn’t been that productive. More on that later.
In the meantime, I’m going to kick back and enjoy our clean home and air.
Swimupstream 