How To Clean Mold From Carpet?

Having carpet makes your home more comfortable and luxurious. It can also retain dust particles and improve indoor climate, sound-absorbing and prevent slippery floors. However, this furniture can also be an ideal environment for mold to live and grow in your home.

Now, mold is a natural fungus that can grow in high humidity places. They grow rapidly and create a foul smell in your home that can cause serious problems to your health.

If you have mold in your house, you need to remove it soon. The more you let it stay and feed on your carpet dust, the more damage and stubborn it will become.

Thus, understanding how to clean mold from carpet can help you get rid of them effectively and retain your healthy, safe, and cozy home.

Our article will find out how mold from carpet forms and how to clean mold from carpet.

How Does Mold From Carpet Form?

It is possibly not the first time you heard about mold growing indoors. So, how does mold form on your carpet?

*Molds are everywhere in our environment (img by Bart Everson)*

Here’s A Fact For You:

Molds are everywhere in our environment, both indoor and outdoor. Their role is vital to the ground due to their function – digesting organic matter such as dead leaves.

Molds grow by reproducing microscopic spores, which is too small for our naked eyes to notice. These spores are ever-present in the air and go to a great distance for their new habitat.

In order to grow, mold spores need to find an ideal environment with organic food. The mold spores’ journey will end when they land on damp places caused by roof leaks, condensation, or lack of ventilation. Some common areas that can have molds:

Bathroom
Basement walls
Areas around the window
Areas near leaky water

Therefore, moisture-control is extremely important if you want to prevent mold from forming in your home.

Besides dampness, mold needs a food source to nurture itself. Mold’s food is organic substances such as papers, cloth, wood, and plant material.

Therefore, your carpet, a highly absorbent surface with many types of dust, can be an ideal environment to mold if you don’t take care of it properly.

It only takes a water splash and a mold spore landing on the right place to damage your carpet.

When the molds grow from carpet, it is rarely visible on the surface. In fact, they stay under the rug and even the padding. Certain signs you can tell that there are molds from your carpet:

One of the very first signs is mildew in the carpet. Mildew has a white color, whereas mold is black, blue, or green, depending on the type of mold.

Water damage spots can be a potential place for mold to grow as the growing process can be within 24 to 48 hours. Therefore, it is wise that you quickly dispose of the spots.

If you smell a damp, foul, or stale smell, it is a sign of mold. In addition, discolorations or stains can also be mold.

Although molds are vital to our natural environment, they are not harmless fungus. In fact, a study by the Institute of Medicine shows that molds are proved to be able to cause respiratory tract symptoms such as:

Coughing
Sneezing
Running nose
Asthma attacks on people who have a history of having asthma.

Therefore, having molds on carpet is dangerous to our health as we live and inhale mold spores daily.

Regarding its harm, it is necessary to clean the mold from the carpet as soon as possible to keep a healthy environment.

Tips You Need to Know to Clean Molds Safely and Properly:

Inspect Your Molds

If you’re dealing with black mold, it is better that you hire a professional to remove it as black mold can even irritate your skins, headaches, and chronic fatigue with just slight exposure.

Cleaning Mold is Not for Everyone.

It is recommended that pregnant women, children, and people with weak immune systems should not do this process at home due to molds’ harmful reactions.

Wear Proper Protection

If you’ve decided to clean molds at home, you need to prepare protection clothing to minimize the bad reaction. What you need to equip:

Shower cap
Rubber glove
Eye protection
Suitable footwear
P1 or P2 face mask

So, now that you still want to remove the molds at home, here are the steps to clean mold from carpet:

Step 1: Prepare The Products

There are many types of products you can use to remove molds. If the molds are small, you can use baking soda and vinegar. If the molds are larger, it is best to use stronger chemicals such as bleach.

Step 2: Locate The Mold Spots.

As we said above, molds will not be visible on the surface, so you need to look for it underneath, fiber, and padding. A thorough check can help you spot the source of mold and prevent it from growing.

Step 3: Reduce Humidity.

Molds love moisture areas. Thus, we need to repress the growing rates by maximizing ventilation in the room, such as opening windows and putting fans toward the mold areas.

Step 4: Deodorize The Carpet

Use a great amount of baking soda on the mold area and wait for it to absorb all the moisture and foul odor overnight. Then, use a vacuum to remove the baking soda the next day.

The vacuum you use should have a high-efficiency particulate air filter (HEPA) that can trap all the tiny particles, including mold spores.

Step 5: Clean Your Carpet

If there are some mold stains left, you can put pure vinegar in a spray bottle and apply it to the stain. Then scrub it off with a hard brush.

Then, turn on a fan to dry the spots.

At this step, you can use bleach to remove all the spots left. Mix half a cup of bleach in a gallon of water. Then start scrubbing all of the molds off immediately with a brush.

Finish it off by water down all the bleach.

Step 6: Dry Your Carpet

Keep the room ventilated while you blow-dry the carpet so the moisture will be completely removed.

Also Read: How To Deal With Mold Under Laminate Flooring

How Often Should You Clean Your Carpet?

Having a carpet can be a comfortable and nice decoration for your home. However, it can be a potential habitat of molds if you don’t check often.

Learning how to clean mold from carpet can help you remove all the stubborn mold, but cleaning molds is a long, time-consuming, and tiring job as it requires a lot of precautions and exposes to many health risks.

Thus, homeowners should prevent carpet mold in the first place by cleaning it often. Depending on the activities and people in your home, cleaning frequency can vary 1 per week to daily.

If you live alone: you should vacuum the carpet 1 per week and deep cleaning every 12-18 months.
If you live with your family: you should vacuum the carpet 1-2 per week and deep clean every 6- 12 months.
If you live with large families and pets: you need to vacuum the carpet daily and deep cleaning every 2 – 3 months.

Here Are Some Other Ways to Help Avoid Molds in The Future:

Maximize The Ventilation

This prevents the mold from staying in your home and infesting. You can open windows and turn on fans for rooms that have carpets during the day to increase the result.

Trying a dehumidifier can be a good way to control the moisture of the environment. You can use it on the carpet and let it run at night.

Fix The Damp Sources

Check all the water leaking areas to make sure that your indoor environment is clean and dry. This is the ultimate way to prevent all sources of mold.

Pay Attention to The Weather

When it rains, you need to shut the windows and doors to block the damp spots in your house. Also, during the raining season, you should check the carpet more often to spot any signs of molds.

Use The Right Vacuum Cleaner

It is not easy to remove the molds completely from your carpet. Even when you have done all the steps, the mold spores can still hang around in the fibers.

Thus, you need to use a vacuum that has a HEPA filter to suck all the bags of dust and mold spores inside and prevent them from entering the air again.

Conclusion

Carpet is an excellent decoration to your home as it exudes comfort and a cozy atmosphere. However, it has a highly absorbent material that can trap the dust and water on its surface. Therefore, it is easily infected by mold if we do not treat it soon.

After this article, we hope you will understand how mold can form in your home, how to clean mold from carpet, and prevent such infestation in the future. Cleaning carpet can take a lot of effort, but it helps you and your family enjoy a good and healthy life.

How To Clean Mold From Carpet? – Tips You Need To Know

How Does Mold From Carpet Form?

Here’s A Fact For You: