Black Mold (Stachybotrys) Exposure – What Items Can Be Safely Cleaned and Brought To A New Space?
In this post, I’m going to share my experience and make recommendations for what items you can safely clean and bring with you into a mold free environment. My list is based off my own experience and the experiences of many others that I have communicated with over the past two years. My goal is to prevent you from suffering the common complications of accidental cross contamination.
One of the hardest parts of my experience with black mold was hearing my Functional Medical doctor say “treat your home’s contents as if they have been burned in a fire”. I do believe that if my family had come home to our house engulfed in flames, the loss of our personal items would have been less traumatic. With a fire, you can “see” that the item is destroyed. With mold, your eyes tell your heart that there is nothing wrong with the item. Your brain has to convince your heart that invisible toxins are embedded in your precious porous items. Your brain must acknowledge and accept that these toxins will keep you or your family member sick. Even knowing that, it hurts your spirit to part with your stuff.
Let me share a little background for perspective – I’m a prepper. When we discovered mold, part of our basement was set up like a giant grocery store and emergency preparedness storage center . I have been a couponer for decades and had accumulated over a year’s worth of food storage. My family’s bug out bags were hanging on the walls, there was a closet full of gifts and toys and thousands of personal care and medical items stored in cabinets. My recently remodeled office/craft room was located in our basement. I had a library of over 1200 books including the books I read to my children when they were little, enough home school supplies and resources to teach a child through high school and college text books. So please believe me when I say I know how utterly devastated you feel when you consider losing your personal property.
As always though, the Lord had my family’s best interest at heart. Our Lord wants us to rely on Him for our sense of security, not stuff. Y’all, when I saw all our “stuff”, that I knew in my heart could sustain us through a year of world chaos (or whatever emergency I had been prepping for), go into a dumpster, it broke my heart! And it was humbling.
I had told myself while I was accumulating all that stuff that the Lord advises us to be prepared in His Word. And He does. Deep down though, I knew that I had crossed over from being obediently prepared to being simply disobedient because I was going against God’s Word to procure a lot of the items. I had put a lot of those “awesome deals” and “we can’t live without this” items on credit! And I knew, knew, knew that was NOT God’s way of preparing. How many times do we make excuses to ourselves to justify our sinful behavior? And how many times does the Lord love us enough to teach us His truth in ways He knows we will understand? Well, that’s a blog post of it’s own! Let’s just say, God has made it clear to me that ALL I need for provision, no matter what situation the world finds itself in, is HIM. Overnight, I went from thinking I had my safe dream home, filled with earthly security to literally having NOTHING physical that I could trust to be safe for my family. As a family, we clung to Jesus and each other and He continues to walk us through this storm!
Ok, now that you know that you CAN make it without your stuff, let’s talk about what personal property can be safely cleaned and brought with you to a mold free environment. I know this list is overwhelmingly short. I truly believe that bringing only these few items with you initially, can help you heal faster and prevent dangerous cross contamination.
- Metal Items. Metal cookware/bakeware, stainless steel pots and pans, silverware, serving ware, utensils, metal framed prescription eyeglasses, scissors, cast iron pans, jewelry, home decor, firearms and ammunition – basically anything that is made entirely of metal
- Do your decontaminating outside in the open air. Metal items can be cleaned by using a 50/50 mix of ammonia and water. Use a large storage tub or something similar that’s large enough to hold the mixture. Submerge your items and let them soak for a few minutes. When you take them out, do not rinse. Place the items in the sun to dry. The sun isn’t absolutely necessary but sunlight is such a powerful natural disinfectant that I highly recommend using it!
- If your item can’t be submerged and soaked, use a spray bottle of the 50/50 ammonia and water mixture. Use a microfiber cloth or a paper towel to wipe the item down and allow it to dry.
- A word about some metal bakeware/cookware – if it has grease or food stains, don’t bother cleaning it. The cooked on grease/oil is porous/sticky and will hold on to mycotoxins.
- Glass/China/Glazed Pottery. Glassware, bowls, serving dishes, glass decor/figurines, glass bottles, basically any unbroken glass or glazed surface
- Glass items can be cleaned with the same 50/50 mix of ammonia and water in the same way as metal items. Just allow to dry in the sun.
- Electronics without a motor or fan. Cell phones, tablets, computer monitors with glass screens, etc.
- Use a spray bottle with the 50/50 mix of ammonia and water. Take any phone cases/tablet cases off and dispose of them. Spray ammonia mixture on a paper towel, wipe the electronics with the mixture and allow to dry completely.
- Be sure to remove and replace any plastic cases on your phones/tablets.
Personal items that fall into one of these three categories are the only things I recommend cleaning and bringing into a safe space. I know how overwhelming this sounds and believe me, I understand and sympathize with you and your family. But, I truly care about you and want to see you completely recovered and sharing your healing experiences with others. Does this list mean all your other items need to be trashed? Not necessarily! I will go over what I believe to be the best way to handle other items in another post.
