15 Steps for Cleaning Mold using the Enhanced Housekeeping© method

The summary you need to begin cleaning for safe living!

Introduction to Enhanced Housekeeping©

Written Apr 29 2021, revised July 2024.

(See also the international standard of care, the “IICRC/ANSI S520-2024 Professional Mold Remediation Standard”, commonly called “The S520” for short. This is the latest revision with current updates and focus on mycotoxins. It is an industry CONSENSUS document developed with international experts and practitioners from all sectors and disciplines of the industry. There is no other like it. Get a copy! And demand your “mold tester” and “mold remediator” have a copy, learn it, and follow it when you need to hire and pay someone to do the remediation for you. In the S520 you will find the Section on Contents.)

My recommendations are based on the Enhanced Housekeeping© techniques that I created long ago and I’ve been teaching to remediators and recommending for over 18 years!

Cleaning is a science.

There is no magic ingredient. But there is a LOT of snake oil. Avoid the products that use marketing hype. Avoid the stuff designed “for mold”. There is no such special stuff. Why? It’s chemistry. Cleaning chemistry. I will try to take you through the basics of Enhance Housekeeping©.

These are the things I teach the professional remediators. Of course there are many more details that I teach. But we need to start somewhere. Hopefully this “somewhere” will let you breath a little easier and sleep a little better. Now let’s take a quick look at the basics of cleaning mold, mold growth, and mold debris like spores and fragments.

The point here is that “cleaning” is something we all do but few of us do it good enough to make the house “safer”. There are a lot of reasons to remove as much dirt and dust as possible. And, there are a lot of reasons to clean better than you ever have. I realize that cleaning better than ever is very difficult. It is stressful. It brings anxiety and worry with it - “Did I do it good enough?”.

My advice is this:
Enhanced Housekeeping© is doing things like before but much much better.

One step up at a time. If you vacuum your bedroom once a week and it takes you 10 mins, next week you’ll spend 20 minutes!

If you use a simple dust wipe, next time why not use a good microfiber cloth with a better cleaning product.

“ENHANCE” what you think is regular housekeeping and you’ll be taking one step toward a healthier safer home. Let’s get started and talk about some Enhance Housekeeping© “better” practices!

15 Things You Need to Know to correctly Clean and Remove mold using Enhance Housekeeping©

1.     Hot water and soap is the basic. If nothing else is available, or if all else fails! Seriously though. I’m not joking. This is necessary for cleaning. Don’t be afraid of water or damp methods. You won’t ever clean something and have it remain wet nearly long enough to “grow mold”. Yes, I know! Some people are saying scary things about water. BUT, think about this - people mop their kitchen floor all the time. They literally will use an entire gallon with that stinky ol’ mop. And it NEVER gets moldy.

We Don’t Kill the Mold - We REMOVE the Mold!

Ok so now you have it. The FIRST SECRET of cleaning mold is good, all-purpose cleaning products. Not homemade ones. You need one with actual surfactants and detergents (the ingredients that make a cleaner a cleaning product that works to remove the dirt and pieces of mold growth and mold spores).

No magic ingredients. No snake oils. Don’t fall for the wild claims from people that have great Instas and Snaps, or products with tons of marketing by “marketing and product” experts (there are a LOT of these out there!) . I’ve never met one of these kinda people who knew anything about chemistry and biology except buzzwords to sell their junk. If it sounds too good to be true…

We avoid scented product. No Fragrance is always better product - fragrance is a VOC and we are working hard at eliminating VOC’s from our homes and offices.

2. CHEMISTRY. Have a wide variety of cleaning chemicals for different types of dirt and/or substrates. Detergent and surfactant are the key ingredients. The pH is also important  – acidic or alkaline? Remember, if you're cleaning the kitchen or room with grease, oils, fire soot (it’s oily), you need to use Alkaline cleaning products. Not vinegar or citric acid. The aci- based cleaners are for bath and shower where we need to remove soap and hard water buildup.

3. I have some favorite commercial brands - but I always STAY AWAY from certain ingredients:

• Fragrances. Always choose fragrance free. These are VOCs. These chemicals are far too irritating to the respiratory system, cause reactions in many MCS patients, and often just a unique odor can be physically and emotionally upsetting.

• Essential oils. Period. Never. Period. I can’t say this strong enough! Why? A single essential oil can offgas 10, 20 even 30 or more VOCs. They are not “pure” in the sense (no pun intended) that they are a single ingredient! This is often confusing and complicated. Do NOT use them in candles or vaporizers or diffusers either. You’re putting BAD and unknown unpredictable chemicals INTO YOUR LUNGS. Even if they are only to add fragrance and scent.

• Grapefruit seed extract (or “citrus seed”). This is a scam with no basis except profit-making and great marketing. It “sounds” natural and safe. It is nothing. They contain some essential oil (which I just told you are a no-no. period). BUT - and here’s the rub - the manufacturer’s of these products have NEVER revealed what “extract” really is - ever. Sounds suspicious to me! So why bother.

• Thyme oil (aka thymol). This is another scam. It’s sadly in one of the most popular commercial products used by “professional” remediators. It is usually the only ingredient. It is NOT a detergent or surfactant - which means it is a POOR cleaning product - no better than plain water. AND it is an ESSENTIAL OIL. As I explain above, lots and lots of VOCs that you do NOT want to breath. And, it’s overpriced. And IF they tell you it will “kill the mold” - it’s not very good at that either. No disinfectant will kill all mold - and all disinfectants kill some mold. This one, thyme oil, is just average.

• Home-Made single ingredient, DIY recipes. MOST of these are hogwash! Almost all are no different than plain ol’ tap water! Most are hand-me-downs from “old wives tales”. Or from times when people, like your great-great-grandmother back in 1905, who didn’t have access to modern detergents and surfactants.

  • Ingredients that just waste your money: Vinegar, thyme oil (aka thymol), borax (sodium borate), baking soda, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice, and who-knows how many others, are all typically promoted by the blogs who teach you to do things to be safer and healthier. They are almost always wrong when it comes to actual chemistry and cleaning.

  • For example - mixing vinegar and borax (or baking soda) is VERY COMMON out there. Sadly it’s complete chemical nonsense! Why? Because one ingredient, vinegar, is low pH, the other, baking soda or borax, high pH and when you mix them, they cancel each other’s pH advantage.

  • Here’s something similar - you might have heard about it. It has nothing to do with cleaning BUT has everything to do with bad or fake or pseudo-science. It’s the trendy and all-to-fake claims of “alkaline water” - a scam based on bad bad bad science (or a scam looking to take your money!). By the way - the store-bought bottles of “alkaline” water made with “proprietary ionization” or whatever special expensive-sounding secret process, is literally tap water (about 1/2 a penny worth) with about 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda (about 1/10 of a penny worth)! And they rip you off for $3, $4, even $6 or more. AND guess what? It’s completely rendered useless because it’s altered to a non-alkaline liquid the INSTANT it hits your stomach. Scam Scam Scam. Let’s get back to cleaning up your mold and mold spores and toxins.

    Most “Mold” specific products are scams

    Most simply don’t do a good job at cleaning

• If possible, avoid “quats”. Or at least be prepared to test the product and see if you react when you spray it into the air. Usually, the irritation is immediate to the nose, sinus, throat. You’ll know. (“Quats” is short for quaternary ammonium compounds. First - they are NOT “ammonia”. That’s chemically different. Don’t confuse things. There are many types of quats. They are very common and will be found in over 75% of all commercial cleaning and disinfecting products. Quats have many chemical names but usually contain the words quaternary and ammonium, and sometimes the ingredients list very long chemical formulas listed in the “active ingredient” list, and often these are quats. )

• Don’t buy “mold kill” specific products. They are a waste and most are ineffective cleaners. Just do NOT buy anything that claims to be specifically “for Mold” , or claims to “deactivate, denature, or destroy” Why? Because those have disinfectant ingredients – and disinfectants are NOT good at cleaning. And we don’t try to kill mold! We remove it. With soap. Detergents. Vacuums. Wipes. No chemical treatments.

  • The best methods for remediating and cleaning mold stick to and follow the most important principle: REMOVE mold, do NOT KILL mold. First - the disinfectants (anti-microbials) are not very effective at actually “killing” all the mold they claim will be dead. Second - dead mold still is harmful. Period. This is not debatable. So spending money and time and putting chemicals in your home is a WASTE. No matter how dead, or how alive, we ALWAYS REMOVE the mold growth and debris. See my other articles, “7 Health Effects” and “Mycotoxins for everyone” for more science-based information that will help you understand this Principle of Mold Remediation.

We like products that are specifically developed to be low toxic and non-toxic .

4. TOOLS: Have a wide variety of available good tools like different types of microfiber cloths, different types of brushes and scrubbies, have more than one good vac with good brush attachments. Learn to use them all. Practice. Experiment. Some brushes are great - some are horrible. Brushing alone is NOT enough - you must also wipe the surface after brushing. You must Rinse with fresh plain water after using the soap and detergents. Wipe the surface until the cloth is CLEAN. If there is any discoloration, keep cleaning.

5. LIGHT. Have lots of light - from all angles! Learn and know how to look for dirt and mold growth! Most people have no clue what mold growth actually can look like. They know the obvious “black stuff” is probably mold growth. BUT, they don’t know how to recognize the white, or pink, or salmon, or magenta or green or yellow stuff. Each has a reason it’s growing – water, vapor, temperature, time, material it’s eating for dinner!

6. PRACTICE, TRIAL, LEARN. Be willing to spend time in the beginning to do some test methods, do some trial and error, to see what cleans best and quickest. Mix it up. You never know what might work better than the last method you tried.

7. Use both dry wiping and wet wiping depending on type of dirt and substrate material.

8. Three Rounds: clean every object THREE TIMES. Clean every surface more than once to get “really” clean (I have a 3x rule)! The more you repeat, the cleaner it’ll be.

1st time gets the big obvious dirt.

2nd time gets the stuff in the nooks and crannies.

3rd time is when the last layer of invisible remnants of mold are being removed, plus it gets the residue from prior cleaning attempts, and forces the cleaner to look very closely at the surfaces.

Sometimes, you need to do it a fourth or fifth time. The point is - LEARN how hard it is to clean the way we want you to clean so you’re safer in your home.

RINSE: You must Rinse with fresh plain water after using the soap and detergents.

REPEAT: Wipe the surface until the cloth is CLEAN. If there is any discoloration, keep cleaning, do it again with the detergent, rinse it again with plain water.

9. Be prepared for static. Static makes dirt stick to the surfaces. This means you might need to reclean, or get it wet, or use a different type of cleaning cloth. Experiment. You’ll find something that removes the sticky dust.

10. It’s all in the DETAILS. Paying attention to detail is paramount.

11. Provide lots of light! Wait, did I say that already?

12. QA/QC. Implement quality control by someone who is not part of the cleaning labor – have them do the evaluation of how well you did, do this for the different methods and between different attempts (rounds of cleaning).

13. Use lots of LIGHT - from all angles. Yes I did just say it again. In fact, I said it three times.

14. Pay more attention to DETAIL. And yes I said that again too! Can’t say it enough. It’s the number one reason people fail the cleaning and remediation – no attention to the details.

15. And Finally: lots of the secret ingredient: Elbow Grease. This ain’t gonna be easy or quick. It’s a labor-intensive effort. Sometimes, you’ll need help. sometimes you’ll need more time. And sometimes, if you are very senstive, or the stuff is very dusty and dirty, YOU SHOULD NOT BE THE ONE TO DO THE CLEANING. I can’t stress this enough. Many of my clients get hit with bad symptoms when they do the cleaning and are not careful.

(Elbow Grease available here - EverythingyoudontwantandNothingyouneed. com).

VACUUMING. I don’t include how-to vacuum in this article - SEE my other articles for how to really vacuum the right way - “Vacuums Explained”, and “Carpet Removal”, and “HEPA Vac Overview”. They’ll help you. A Lot!

NOW you’re doing it the Enhanced Housekeeping© way! Good luck - and please let me know how your doing!