How to Remove Mold Smell

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

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

With the unpleas­ant smell of a fun­gal infec­tion, dis­in­fect­ing and dis­in­fect­ing impro­vised means, as well as drugs that neu­tral­ize the unpleas­ant odor, will help to cope. We act in the fol­low­ing sequence.

Washing walls and furniture

We move all the fur­ni­ture to the mid­dle of the room, the walls affect­ed by the fun­gus (they will be dirty gray, with spots), first wash it if pos­si­ble. To do this, you can use the most sim­ple and safe means of house­hold chem­i­cals — laun­dry soap. We rub a quar­ter of the bar on a veg­etable grater, dilute it with water at room tem­per­a­ture, wait 15 min­utes until the chips dis­solve. We take a sponge, moist­en it with soapy water and apply a thick lay­er on the affect­ed areas of the walls, as well as on the back of the fur­ni­ture that has come into con­tact with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­faces. We lath­er thor­ough­ly, try­ing to wipe off the fun­gus and stains from it. If the mold lay­er is large, you can first use a con­struc­tion spat­u­la to remove it. After clean­ing the sur­faces with soap, which, by the way, has dis­in­fec­tant prop­er­ties, we wash them with clean water until the foam stops form­ing on the sponge. Allows walls and fur­ni­ture to dry.

Disinfecting 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 cap­tures these sur­faces. What can be used:

1. Med­ical alco­hol dilut­ed with water, vod­ka.

2. Hydro­gen per­ox­ide (may cause dis­col­oration of sur­faces, so test on a small area first).

3. Vine­gar dilut­ed with water.

4. Ammo­nia.

5. White­ness (1 part prod­uct to 10 parts water).

6. A solu­tion of bak­ing soda.

All these liq­uids are con­ve­nient to use with 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 walls and fur­ni­ture walls, let dry, ven­ti­late the room. Espe­cial­ly care­ful­ly you need to ven­ti­late the rooms after using ammo­nia, as it has a very pun­gent smell.

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 cir­cu­late freely through­out the room, and there are no con­di­tions for the recur­rence of mold spots.

We use fragrances and odor neutralizers

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

1. Aro­ma sticks.

2. Aro­ma can­dles.

3. Aro­ma lamp.

4. House­hold air fresh­en­er.

5. Home­made fla­vor­ing — a vase with crushed cit­rus peels or ground cof­fee.

6. Odor absorber — a mix­ture of salt and soda, crushed acti­vat­ed car­bon.

7. Odor neu­tral­iz­er in the apart­ment.

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

How to get rid of moldy smell in bathrooms and toilets

First you need, of course, to remove the mold itself. It usu­al­ly breeds on sur­faces in hard-to-reach areas that are missed dur­ing clean­ing (under the sink, on the bot­tom of the toi­let bowl, under the bath­tub), as well as on the tiles that dec­o­rate the walls. Espe­cial­ly in the con­nect­ing 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 — White­ness, vine­gar, dilut­ed alco­hol. And also Domestos — just when it comes time to clean the toi­let, apply a lit­tle prod­uct to the sponge and treat all the affect­ed sur­faces, if you apply the drug in a thin lay­er on a pre­vi­ous­ly cleaned (washed) sur­face, you can not even rinse it off. From spe­cial­ized prod­ucts that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly remove mold and elim­i­nate an unpleas­ant, musty smell, you can use Bugs Anti-Mold. The drug, although not the cheap­est (about 4 dol­lars per 500 ml), but with reg­u­lar (pro­phy­lac­tic) use, it shows excel­lent effi­cien­cy. After the mold treat­ment, the smell of the fun­gus will not remain, ven­ti­late the room more often, mon­i­tor the integri­ty of the water pipes, con­nect the hot bat­tery, and this “aro­ma” will no longer appear in the bath­room or toi­let.

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

Mold on the bal­cony occurs quite often if it is not insu­lat­ed or a high-qual­i­ty ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem is not estab­lished there. Espe­cial­ly often the fun­gus affects those bal­conies and log­gias where veg­eta­bles are stored in autumn and win­ter, since it is on them that it mul­ti­plies when it enters the nutri­ent medi­um. To elim­i­nate mold and 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, White­ness, dis­solved in water. If you plan to store food on the bal­cony, it is bet­ter to process it using safer prepa­ra­tions — laun­dry soap, soda and vine­gar, hydro­gen per­ox­ide.

The smell of mold comes from upholstered furniture, it smells in the closet — what to do

First of all, you need to try to take out the fur­ni­ture for pro­cess­ing in the open air. If this is not pos­si­ble, con­sid­er whether you can per­form the pro­ce­dure on a bal­cony with open win­dows. 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 to be cleaned and deodor­ized, pro­ceed as fol­lows:

1. Scrub the fun­gus stain with a hard or semi-hard (depend­ing on the uphol­stery mate­r­i­al) brush.

2. Treat the stain and near­by areas with an aque­ous solu­tion of soda. You can try to rub some of the prod­uct into the fab­ric in order to thor­ough­ly and deeply clean the fibers.

3. Leave the bak­ing soda for 1–2 hours, then first brush it off with a brush, and then wash off the residue with plain luke­warm water. To pre­vent water stains, treat the entire sur­face of the fur­ni­ture uphol­stery. If the mate­r­i­al allows, clean the uphol­stery addi­tion­al­ly with a soapy solu­tion of laun­dry soap.

4. Dry the fur­ni­ture thor­ough­ly in the sun or with a hair dry­er.

5. Vac­u­um fur­ni­ture if pos­si­ble.

If you need to remove the smell of mold from the clos­et, “walls”, remove all things, shoes, etc. from it. (which does not place to dry and ven­ti­late). Wipe the inner sur­faces first with a soapy solu­tion of laun­dry soap, then with plain water, then with vine­gar dilut­ed with water, and prefer­ably with an aque­ous solu­tion of fresh­ly squeezed lemon juice. Wipe all sur­faces dry with a paper tow­el (toi­let paper, dry cot­ton cloth), leave to air for sev­er­al hours with doors open and draw­ers pulled out.

How to remove mildew smell from washing machine

Mold often appears on parts of auto­mat­ic type wash­ing machines. It lit­er­al­ly occu­pies the drum door seal, the deter­gent dis­penser, 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 the mold and its smell in the inter­nal mech­a­nism, you can pour the same vine­gar in the amount of 200 ml into the con­tain­er for liq­uid deter­gents. or the same vol­ume of a soapy solu­tion obtained from shav­ings of laun­dry soap and water. Then start wash­ing with hot water. After com­plet­ing the pro­ce­dure, pour lemon juice or a solu­tion of cit­ric acid into the con­tain­er and start the rinse mode. Then we wipe the drum inside dry, leave the wash­ing machine door open for sev­er­al hours to ven­ti­late.

If mold has appeared on the rub­ber of the door seal, 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 any­where, as the rub­ber will be per­ma­nent­ly stained with them, but the unpleas­ant smell of fun­gus and damp­ness will dis­ap­pear. In the future, always add vine­gar to rinse things, so you make them soft, elim­i­nate yel­low spots and stains, dis­in­fect fab­rics and the inside of the wash­ing machine.

Moldy smell in fridge — how to get rid of it

The process of remov­ing the smell of mold from the refrig­er­a­tor requires a respon­si­ble approach. After all, we need not only to remove the smell of the fun­gus, but also not to bring oth­er extra­ne­ous fla­vors into the refrig­er­a­tor that can 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 in itself it has a rather notice­able smell that many peo­ple do not like, it will not linger on the plas­tic and glass sur­faces of the refrig­er­a­tor. So, the sequence of actions:

1. We dis­con­nect the refrig­er­a­tor from the mains, take out all the prod­ucts, as well as the shelves and in gen­er­al every­thing that can be tak­en out. If the door is detached, it is bet­ter to remove it and process it sep­a­rate­ly.

2. We pre­pare a soap solu­tion from laun­dry soap or take a ready-made prod­uct, liq­uid soap, which is sold in house­hold chem­i­cal stores.

3. We thick­ly lath­er the entire inte­ri­or space and sur­faces of the refrig­er­a­tor, pay spe­cial atten­tion to the cor­ners, butt joints, attach­ment details, rub­ber seal (we process the rub­ber “accor­dion” well, if nec­es­sary, use ear sticks to reach the bot­tom of the slots).

4. Leave the soap for an hour, then wash it off with plen­ty of warm water.

5. Wipe dry with a paper tow­el or cloth.

6. We wipe all sur­faces with a new clean sponge soaked in a solu­tion of vine­gar or cit­ric acid.

7. Wipe dry again, leave to ven­ti­late with open doors for 1–2 hours.

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

Clothes smell moldy — what to do

Moldy smell on clothes can appear if the fun­gus lives in the clos­et or on near­by walls. To remove the unpleas­ant odor, you will have to wash things. Light and those that do not shed can be washed with White­ness, and rinsed in a solu­tion of vine­gar, in water with the addi­tion of lemon juice. Dark clothes can be washed using a reg­u­lar pow­der or a spe­cial prod­uct that removes unpleas­ant odors (for exam­ple, an addi­tive for machine wash­ing of sports­wear from the HG brand). If the thing 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 from the smell of mold in the fresh air, prefer­ably in the sun.

How to Remove Mold Smell from Shoes or Bags

If shoes and acces­sories are stored in high humid­i­ty con­di­tions, they can become moldy and acquire a cor­re­spond­ing unpleas­ant odor. Do not imme­di­ate­ly throw away the prod­ucts or car­ry them to dry clean­ing, you can try to cope on your own. What can be done:

1. If the shoes (bag) can be washed, then wash it out­side with laun­dry soap. After that, wipe the inside with water, in which a few table­spoons of White­ness or anoth­er agent con­tain­ing chlo­rine are dis­solved. Then once again treat the inte­ri­or of the prod­uct with vod­ka and dry it, prefer­ably in the sun.

2. If shoes or a bag can­not be washed / washed, then it is first cleaned of mold with a semi-rigid brush, and then wiped inside and out with a sponge dipped in vine­gar solu­tion. After that, dry well and ven­ti­late the prod­uct.

3. If a strong smell of mold comes from inside the shoes, you need to remove the old insoles, put 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 char­coal. After a few days, remove the balls with vine­gar and filler, brush the inte­ri­or, dry, ven­ti­late, put new insoles.

How to remove moldy smell from a thermos

It is not dif­fi­cult to cope with the smell of mold on dish­es, includ­ing in a ther­mos. 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 that, you will need to wash the dish­es, pour boil­ing water and juice of half a lemon again, leave for a few more hours, then rinse under run­ning water and dry, leav­ing with­out a lid.

Precautions for handling mold and mold odor

When pro­cess­ing, you need to take pre­cau­tions just in case. If salt and soda can­not great­ly harm the skin, then once on the mucous mem­brane, they def­i­nite­ly will not deliv­er pleas­ant sen­sa­tions. What can we say about more caus­tic sub­stances, such as vine­gar, ammo­nia, white­ness 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 ele­men­tary rag mask for the nose and mouth. The room after the pro­ce­dure must be ven­ti­lat­ed, and for the dura­tion of the treat­ment from the smell of mold, ask oth­er res­i­dents to leave the room in which it is car­ried out.