How to remove mold smell - expertology magazine

Updated: 07/08/2021 13:18:03

The characteristic musty smell of mold indicates that a fungus dangerous to health has grown in the room. The first thing to do is to eliminate the fungus and the causes of its appearance. Mold quickly invades rooms that are poorly ventilated, where the temperature is moderately cool or warm and where there is a high level of humidity. After treating the fungus, you can still smell it, so in this article we will tell you how to deal with the unpleasant odor.

How to remove the smell of mold in an apartment, house, or private room

Disinfectants and disinfectants at hand, as well as drugs that neutralize the unpleasant odor, will help deal with the unpleasant odor of a fungal infection. We proceed in the following sequence.

Washing walls and furniture

We move all the furniture and walls affected by fungus to the middle of the room (they will be dirty gray, with stains), first wash them if possible. To do this, you can use the simplest and safest household chemical product - laundry soap. We grate a quarter of the block on a vegetable grater, dilute it with water at room temperature, wait 15 minutes until the shavings dissolve. We take a sponge, moisten it with a soapy solution and apply a thick layer to the affected areas of the walls, as well as to the back of the furniture that has been in contact with contaminated surfaces. We soap thoroughly, trying to wipe off the fungus and stains from it. If the layer of mold is large, you can first use a construction spatula to remove it. After cleaning the surfaces with soap, which, by the way, has disinfecting properties, we wash them with clean water until foam stops forming on the sponge. Let the walls and furniture dry.

We disinfect surfaces with improvised means

Next, you need to use preparations that will “finish off” the mold and create an invisible protective layer on the walls and furniture so that the fungus no longer invades these surfaces. What you can use:

Medical alcohol diluted with water, vodka.
Hydrogen peroxide (may cause discolouration of surfaces, so test on a small area first).
Vinegar diluted with water.
Ammonia.
Whiteness (1 part product to 10 parts water).
Baking soda solution.

All these liquids are convenient to use using a spray bottle. Pour into a container, add, if desired, a few drops of essential oil with antiseptic properties (tea tree, spruce, etc.), spray on the walls and sides of furniture, let dry, ventilate the room. You need to ventilate the rooms especially carefully after using ammonia, as it has a very pungent odor.

We arrange furniture correctly

Make sure that the furniture does not touch the walls. There should be a small gap of at least a few centimeters so that air can easily circulate throughout the room, and there are no conditions for the recurrence of mold stains.

We use fragrances and odor neutralizers

To completely drown out the smell of mold in an apartment, house or individual room, you can use improvised fragrances, purchased air fresheners, neutralizers and similar preparations. Here are some options:

Aroma sticks.
Aroma candles.
Aroma lamp.
Household air freshener.
Homemade flavoring - a vase with crushed citrus skins or ground coffee.
Odor absorber - a mixture of salt and soda, crushed activated carbon.
Odor neutralizer in the apartment.

You can also use a special liquid to eliminate odors, including the smell of mold. For example, German-made Reimador hand spray liquid leaves no residue and can be used on any surface.

Reasons for appearance

The appearance of mold in an apartment is associated with the following factors:

increased humidity due to poor ventilation;
roof leak;
freezing of walls;
low temperature due to poor heating performance;
insufficient ventilation.

The appearance of mold is accompanied by the formation of a dark (or black) coating on walls and furnishings. Without appropriate measures, the fungus will spread throughout the room.

In a private home, mold often appears due to flooding of the basement caused by rising groundwater levels.

How to remove the smell of mold in the bathroom and toilet

First you need, of course, to remove the mold itself. It usually multiplies on surfaces in hard-to-reach areas that are overlooked during cleaning (under the sink, on the bottom of the toilet, under the bathtub), as well as on the tiles used on the walls. Especially in the joining seams and at the junction of the bathroom itself with the wall. To eliminate mold in the bathroom, you can use the already listed preparations - White, vinegar, diluted alcohol. And also Domestos - just when the time comes to clean the toilet, apply a little product to a sponge and treat all affected surfaces; if you apply the drug in a thin layer to a previously cleaned (washed) surface, you don’t even have to rinse it off. Of the specialized products that simultaneously remove mold and eliminate an unpleasant, musty odor, you can use Anti-Mold Bugs. Although the drug is not the cheapest (about 400 rubles for 500 ml), with regular (preventive) use it shows excellent effectiveness. After treating the mold, the smell of the fungus will not remain, ventilate the room more often, monitor the integrity of the water pipes, connect the hot heating radiator, and this “aroma” will no longer appear in the bathroom or toilet.

Necessary solutions

And yet it is necessary to begin the fight from the source of its occurrence.

To begin with, you should pay attention to the bathroom, kitchen, corners of walls facing the street, closets filled with old things.
By the way, you need to get rid of old stuff as quickly as possible. It is unlikely that anyone will wear it, and it can bring tangible troubles.
The source of stench is often baseboards, drain pipes, sink bowls, and dirty laundry baskets.

All suspicious dark or white spots will have to be destroyed, and to prevent the fungus from returning, you need to think about eliminating the main cause of its appearance: dampness.

The most effective remedy against already existing mold growth is an antiseptic primer. But it is used mainly during repairs, applied to almost any surface.

How to remove the smell of mold on a balcony or loggia

Mold on the balcony occurs quite often if it is not insulated or there is not a high-quality ventilation system. The fungus especially often affects those balconies and loggias where vegetables are stored in autumn and winter, since it is on them that it multiplies once it gets into the nutrient medium. To eliminate mold and the smell from it, treat the surfaces with any antimycotic agent, for example, a solution of copper sulfate (10 liters of water, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, 0.5 kg of copper sulfate). Or wash the room with a chlorine-containing household chemical, for example, White, dissolved in water. If you plan to store food on the balcony, it is better to carry out processing using safer preparations - laundry soap, soda and vinegar, hydrogen peroxide.

From the carpet

To treat a carpet infected with fungus, use the following substances:

ordinary vinegar (apply to the affected areas for an hour, then wash off);
baking soda (dissolved in water, rubbed into the carpet, and after drying, collected with a vacuum cleaner);
iodine solution (up to 20 drops per 5 liters of water);
essential oils (diluted in water at a concentration of 10 drops per liter).

If the affected area is large, it is best to use professional solutions. It is necessary to treat not only the carpet, but also the floor underneath it. This will eliminate the risk of further spread.

The smell of mold comes from upholstered furniture, there is a smell in the closet - what to do

First of all, you need to try to take the furniture out into the open air for treatment. If this is not possible, consider whether you can perform the procedure on a balcony with the windows open. If this is not possible, then open the windows in the room so that the furniture is ventilated at the same time. If upholstered furniture needs cleaning and deodorizing, proceed as follows:

Clean the fungus stain with a hard or semi-hard brush (depending on the upholstery material).
Treat the stain and surrounding areas with an aqueous soda solution. You can try rubbing some of the product into the fabric to thoroughly and deeply clean the fibers.
Leave the baking soda for 1-2 hours, then first sweep it off with a brush, and then rinse off the residue with regular lukewarm water. To prevent water stains from forming, treat the entire surface of the furniture upholstery. If the material allows, clean the upholstery additionally with a soapy solution of laundry soap.
Dry the furniture thoroughly in the sun or with a hair dryer.
Vacuum furniture if possible.

If you need to remove the smell of mold from a closet, “wall”, remove all things, shoes, etc. from it. (which cannot be dried and ventilated). Wipe the internal surfaces first with a soapy solution of laundry soap, then with plain water, and then with vinegar diluted with water, or better yet, with an aqueous solution of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Wipe all surfaces dry with a paper towel (toilet paper, dry cotton cloth), and leave to air for several hours with doors open and cabinets pulled out.

How to remove mold smell from washing machine

Mold often appears on parts of automatic washing machines. It literally occupies the drum door seal, the tray for filling the detergent, the filter and the water supply hose. To clean external, so to speak, accessible surfaces, you can use Domestos or table vinegar at a concentration of 6% or 9%. In order to remove mold and its smell in the internal mechanism, you can pour the same vinegar in an amount of 200 ml into the container for liquid detergents. or the same volume of soap solution obtained from laundry soap shavings and water. Then start the wash cycle with hot water. After completing the procedure, pour lemon juice or citric acid solution into the container and start the rinse mode. Then we wipe the inside of the drum dry and leave the washing machine door open for several hours to ventilate.

If mold appears on the rubber seal on the door, between its layers, wash the rubber with detergent or soapy water, then treat with vinegar, citric acid or juice. Mold stains on rubber will most likely not go away, since the rubber will be permanently stained by them, but the unpleasant smell of fungus and dampness will disappear. In the future, always add vinegar to rinse things, this way you will make them soft, eliminate yellow spots and stains, and disinfect the fabrics and insides of the washing machine.

The smell of mold in the refrigerator - how to remove it

The process of removing mold smell from a refrigerator requires a responsible approach. After all, we need to not only remove the smell of fungus, but also not introduce other foreign aromas into the refrigerator that could be absorbed into the food. Therefore - no household chemicals. We use only natural preparations. In this case, the same universal laundry soap will help us out. Despite the fact that it itself has a rather noticeable odor, which many people do not like, it will not linger on the plastic and glass surfaces of the refrigerator. So, the sequence of actions:

We unplug the refrigerator, take out all the food, as well as the shelves and generally everything that can be taken out. If the door becomes detached, it is better to remove it and process it separately.
We prepare a soap solution from laundry soap or take a ready-made product, liquid soap, which is sold in household chemical stores.
We thoroughly lather the entire interior space and surfaces of the refrigerator, paying special attention to the corners, joining seams, fastening parts, and rubber seal (we carefully treat the rubber “accordion”; if necessary, use ear sticks to reach the bottom of the cracks).
Leave the soap for an hour, then wash it off with plenty of warm water.
Wipe dry with a paper towel or cloth.
We wipe all surfaces with a new, clean sponge soaked in a solution of vinegar or citric acid.
Wipe dry again and leave to ventilate with the doors open for 1-2 hours.

To prevent mold from forming in the future and to prevent an unpleasant “aroma” from appearing, you can put in the refrigerator an absorber of excess moisture (crushed activated carbon, salt, soda or a special preparation for refrigerators), as well as an odor neutralizer, for example, an odor absorber for GREEN&CLEAN Professional refrigerators.

Clothes smell like mold - what to do?

A musty smell on clothes may appear if the fungus lives in the closet or on nearby walls. To remove the unpleasant aroma, you will have to wash things. Light colors and those that do not fade can be washed with White, and rinsed in a vinegar solution, in water with the addition of lemon juice. Dark items can be washed using regular powder or a special product that removes unpleasant odors (for example, an additive for machine washing sportswear from the HG brand). If the item cannot be washed or is problematic (outerwear), you can wipe it inside and out with a sponge dipped in a weak solution of vinegar - 1-2 tablespoons per 0.5 liter of water. It is recommended to dry things after treatment to remove the smell of mold in the fresh air, preferably in the sun.

Quick solutions

The easiest and fastest way to get rid of an unpleasant odor is to use a regular air freshener.

It instantly refreshes the air in the room, filling it with the aromas of the blue sea, green meadow, blooming lilac, and delicate lilies of the valley.
However, such a solution to the problem is only a temporary measure suitable for emergency situations.

An air ionizer will take a little longer to solve the problem of unpleasant odor: It sprays ions that stay in the atmosphere much longer than heavy air freshener molecules. But it will only become a disguise that will not help eliminate the source of the smell.

How to remove mold smell from shoes or bag

If shoes and accessories are stored in conditions of high humidity, they may become stained with mold and develop a corresponding unpleasant odor. You shouldn’t immediately throw away the items or take them to the dry cleaner; you can try to do it yourself. What you can do:

If the shoes (bag) can be washed, then wash the outside of them with laundry soap. After this, wipe the inside with water in which several tablespoons of Whiteness or another product containing chlorine are dissolved. Then treat the interior of the product again with vodka and dry it, preferably in the sun.
If shoes or a bag cannot be washed/washed, then they are first cleaned of mold with a semi-hard brush, and then wiped inside and out with a sponge soaked in a vinegar solution. After this, dry and ventilate the product well.
If the strong smell of mold comes from inside the shoes, you need to remove the old insoles, place cotton balls soaked in vinegar inside, leave for a day, then pour coarse salt, soda or ground coffee inside the products, you can put bags of crushed activated carbon. After a few days, remove the balls with vinegar and the filling, clean the interior with a brush, dry, ventilate, and put on new insoles.

How to remove mold smell from thermos

It’s not difficult to deal with the smell of mold on dishes, including thermoses. If the dishes are glass, ceramic or metal, even the most unpleasant aromas do not linger on such materials. For processing, you can use ordinary salt, soda, vinegar in combination with boiling water. Pour the solution into a thermos and leave for a day. After this, you will need to wash the dishes, pour boiling water and the juice of half a lemon again, leave for a few more hours, then rinse under running water and dry, leaving without a lid.

Prevention measures

If you don’t want to take a long and tedious time to remove the musty aroma, it is better to take preventive measures in advance:

Areas with signs of dampness should be regularly ventilated.
Use “soft” fumigation preparations.
Avoid large temperature changes in the room (install heating).
Do not leave wet items in the washing machine or closet.
It is advisable to install heated towel rails in the bathroom.
Insulate the walls.
Inspect pipes for leaks.

Precautions when treating against mold and its odor

When carrying out processing, you need to take precautions just in case. If salt and soda cannot seriously harm the skin, then if they get on the mucous membrane, they will definitely not bring pleasant sensations. What can we say about more caustic substances, such as vinegar, ammonia, bleach and industrial household chemicals. Therefore, you should always work in rubber gloves, which are used when cleaning the house. And also in a respirator, at least in the most basic rag mask over the nose and mouth. After the procedure, the room must be ventilated, and while the smell of mold is being treated, ask other residents to leave the room in which it is being carried out.