125: Answering All Your Mold Cleaning Questions

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

All right, everyone, welcome to today's Mold Finders Radio podcast. Super excited to have you here. I'm going to be talking about a series of questions that have come in all around content cleaning. So before we get into that, you need to start by downloading my how to clean your moldy stuff guide, because it's all based in that framework and those ideas. So go to cleanmymoldystuff.com, go download it, and then I will wait here for you. Actually, no, I'm not going to wait here for you. You pause. Okay? You pause and then you go do that. And then after you get it, then you start again, and I'm going to pretend like we're just waiting and going, okay, here we go. Hey, you got your download. That's great. First off, guys, this cleaning guide has been a long time in the making. It was something I originally only shared with my inspection clients, and then over time, I started writing it all down and putting it together, and then I turned it into a resource for you guys. The first week that we allowed this resource to go out, like, thousands of these were downloaded. This is such a common topic where there's questions and we just don't know what we're supposed to do. And the reason we don't know what we're supposed to do is, one, there's not a lot of great information, which this guide should hopefully help clean that part of it up. But then the second thing is that we have such a relationship with our stuff. We have more of a relationship with our stuff than we actually do with our homes. In a lot of times, a lot of times, people can wrap their head around, I need to remediate my house, remove a couple walls, do whatever I need to do. But as soon as you talk about possibly getting rid of the chair that grandma left you, it becomes this whole other thing that now it's just so much more difficult, is so much more real. Our emotions are tied to our things. It's not so much tied to the drywall that's getting replaced. And so that's why it gets really complicated. And. And everyone has so many questions. About their stuff. The first thing that I wanted to do in this guide is really cover all the different types of things that can and can't be cleaned. And one thing that I say in here is that literally everything that you own falls into one of the categories that I've put in here. So there isn't anything that you have in your house that does not fall into one of these categories. So what you need to do is look at it, read through it, and decide which category does a particular item fall into, and then apply that to the guide and then look at the recommendations and the cleaning processes and the thought processes around that type of item. Okay? So that's the first thing that I just want to set up. Because even my clients that I've shared this with, like, whoever, they'll go through this and they'll be like, what about this? What about this item? What about this item? What about this item? It always happens. I know it happens. And a lot of times you feel like. But this item is really unique because of X, Y or Z. I really write out how to identify and define and place all of these things in here. If an item is like multiple categories, which category you should default to? All of that stuff is included in this guide, and that's just one piece of the guide. Okay, Overall, what you're going to be getting in this thing is what can be cleaned, what can't be cleaned, where you should be cleaning stuff, what you should be using to clean stuff, and then examples of a bunch of different things. It's really every question that someone has around content cleaning is encompassed in this, what turned into be, 18 page document that runs you through how to literally clean your stuff. Now, the one caveat on this stuff, guys, if you have visible mold growing on stuff, you don't want to clean it. All right? That's the big caveat on this. We're talking about things that are contaminated or cross contaminated, I should say they're in a home that has a mole problem, but there's not mold growing on it. That's the thing. And when you. When you're in Facebook groups and you're in all these different places, everyone just says, throw all your stuff out, burn it. There's nothing you can do. The reason they say that is because they don't really know how or they reintroduce things in the wrong order. Or maybe the cleaning worked on 80% of their stuff, but 20% of it, it didn't. But they have no way to know which 20% of stuff it didn't work on. They started reacting. Bam. They say, throw everything out. You can't keep everything. Right? So this talks through how you reintroduce things back into your house, the order that you do it, the timelines that you do it, how you categorize everything. It's all in here. Okay, so. So again, go to cleanmymoldystuff.com, go get the guide, and then we're going to run through a couple questions that are pretty common, and I'm going to try to knock those out for you here on this episode. So what we're going to do is we're going to go to page five on the guide. Okay? Now, on page five is called the content cleaning introduction. All right? And what I'm talking about here is I start talking about the different elements of the content cleaning equation. And there's two elements to it. There's the content type, and then there's the value of the items. Now, here's the thing, and this is important, too. These are not black and white answers. Okay? So somebody might be really mega sensitive, and somebody might be, like, somewhat sensitive, but not as bad. So the way that they need to handle things, the person who's incredibly sensitive might need to be a little more aggressive and take an extra step and be a little more cautious in how they're treating things as opposed to somebody who might be a little less sensitive. Here's the other thing. A person's health will change over time. It's not like a set standard, like, I am this sick forever, and therefore I cannot be exposed to this forever. That's not how it works. Over time, your body starts to get better. As you start to get healthier, you could start to be exposed to maybe some more things and not have as significant reactions. And as that goes, then your ability to be around something changes. This means that over time, there's a relationship between your health position at the time and. And what you can or can't be exposed to. An amount of that. Okay? So at the beginning, you might not be tolerant to some things, and later on you may be. So one thing to keep in mind through all this, guys, is even some of the items in certain categories that you're not sure of, you can actually take those, store them somewhere, right, and put them in a storage unit somewhere. Work on you. Work on your health. Work on your healing, your detoxing, your drainage pathways, all of that stuff. Support your body. And when your body is able to start catching up and starting to hit equilibrium, then you might be able to reintroduce some of those key items that you were very hesitant to get rid of. And that kind of leads me into what we're talking about today. Had a few questions. It was around timing. And when I say timing more so how long something has been in a moldy space and does that immediately mean if it falls in a do not clean category, that you shouldn't be cleaning it? Okay, so in the guide again, on page five, I start breaking down the categories. So the first type of category is do not clean. Okay? There are just things you shouldn't clean because they can't be cleaned. That's why it says do not clean. Because they can't be cleaned. That's why. So first off, anything with visible mole growth, you just don't want to clean that stuff, right? Like, you just don't do it. You may technically be able to clean something on the surface, but you don't know if you're getting all the way. You know, if it grew into the components of the item, and it's just hairy that way. So if you're listening to this show and you're downloading this guide, you're probably somebody who's a little mold sensitive. And I would just say flat out, if there's something that's visible growth on it, we should just start preparing ourselves to get rid of those things. Now, the next thing is what I call a cushioned porous item. Okay? So think cushion items. Mattresses, pillows, couch cushions, puffy jackets, stuffed animals, carpets, things like that. These are the things I'm saying are impossible to clean. Spores, fragments, toxins, they get embedded in the cushions, and there's no way to get into the cushions to get them out. Think of your mattress. You lay on the top of your mattress, but your mattress has pores in the mattress, right? You sit in it and it opens up, you get up, it closes back, and stuff could get into the pores, into the cushion. How do you clean the inside of a cushion? You can't. You can't vacuum the top of it. You can't wipe the top of it. You can't get into the cushion. Okay? If you can't get in there, then there's no way that you can actually clean it. And that's why it falls into the category of do not clean clean. Okay? That's a black and white interpretation of an item, right? Now, keep in mind, as I'm writing this thing up, I can't talk about every individual scenario that happens. There's so many Variables that go on. So I'm giving you a baseline of concepts to think from, and then you start applying those in your own way on how you are comfortable and what you're comfortable with doing. So the first part of the question is, if I have a cushion porous item that is classified as do not clean. What if it's my mattress and my mattress is not even a year old, Do I have to get rid of that or do I not have to get rid of that? So start backing into it. There's variables to this. We talked about your health position. We talked about things that can't be cleaned. We talked about timing. Like, all these things, right? Okay, so first off, how sick are you? How reactive are you? If you are more reactive to things, then you're going to need to be a little more aggressive in the steps that you take. You need to keep that in mind. If you're someone that can walk in and immediately get mold hits, when you walk in somewhere and start reacting, you're going to need to be way more aggressive than somebody who like, walks in. They don't really feel stuff right away, but if they're there for a while, they start getting a little foggy or this or that. Like, maybe that person can be exposed to a little bit more. Maybe their body's working a little more efficiently than the other person. So that's the first piece to keep in mind. Now, the second thing, the concept of time is so interesting. We have concepts of time as people, and it's years and years of history, of our lives, of people, history, human history, all this stuff to where, when we get all the way to the point where we say, I've had a mattress for about a year, we think that's no time. Because in the grand scheme of our lives, it's not a whole lot of time. And in the grand scheme of human history, it's nothing. And so, like, that piece of time doesn't seem very long. Okay, but think of it this way. You have a mattress in a house. So here's now the next variable. How bad is your house? Variable one, how reactive are you? Variable two, how messed up is your house? How moldy is. How contaminated is your house? Is it just mold or is it mycotoxins? Also, is there bacterial toxins in the house? What is the totality of all the crap that's floating around the house? That one, you're being exposed to and two is settling on your stuff? Okay, so let's say you did an ermi, or let's Say you ran the dust test, and let's say you did the dust test and it came up and you were in code four or code five. So if you're an ERMI group, let's say you're in group four or group five. Those are not very good. Group five is really not good. Group four. Code four is definitely not very good. So if you're in a house that's tipping on the higher end of the overall mold load, you have more stuff floating around. That means more stuff that can settle down on your mattresses, on your couches, on all these things. More stuff that could get into all the pores and the cushions, more exposure, even if it's a shorter period of time. Now, the other thing, a year doesn't seem like a long time, but just think of how long a year actually is. Think about how often you clean your house. Do you clean your house every month? Do you clean it every couple weeks? Do you clean it every three? Do you clean it only at spring cleaning? Like, whatever it is? Think about how often you clean your house and then think about the areas that you don't clean all the time, but then you get to them, like, the third or fourth time, and there's so much dust build up there. So for me, in my office, there's a space behind one of my chairs. It's just harder to get to. So I don't clean it as often just because it's harder to get to. But every now and then, I'm like, I need to get back here and do this. I pull the chair out, and there's a really big buildup of dust that's settled down in the corner on the baseboards in different areas, and. And there's a lot that gets wiped up. You have to think about that and think about that happening everywhere in your house and all that settling on your stuff. Right. The buildup that you see after several months is only because it's been happening over and over and you haven't removed any of it. But with a mattress or a cushion, all of that stuff is getting sucked into the pores and the cushions, right? So that makes it a little more challenging. A year is a really long time. Now, it's not as long as 20 years, sure, but it's a long time. Now, if you're told me, like, hey, I just brought this thing into the house last week. That might be a little different, but, like, I've had this in the house for a year. You're sleeping on it every night. You're Opening the pores of the bed every night, you're then closing them when you get off the bed every night. It's more than you think. Okay, now again, does that mean you have to get rid of it? I'm not going to tell you to get rid of stuff or not get rid of your stuff. All right? That's not what I'm going to do. That's why I made this guide. I want to give you information and thought processes and frameworks to think through to make the decisions for yourself. So think it through. How reactive are you? How bad is your house in the first place? And how long have you had the item? If you think of those three things and put them together, you have an equation that makes sense, right? I'm not very reactive. That number goes down. My house isn't that bad. That number goes down. Can I keep something that maybe has been here for a year? Maybe you have a higher likelihood of maybe being able to deal with that if your reaction levels aren't low and your house isn't that bad. Flip it around. I walk into a house, and with three seconds, I flare up. Whatever your flare is, is it pain, is it brain fog, is it skin breakouts? Whatever your flare is happens in 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. It's a very fast, high reaction time. How bad is the house? I did a Ermie. It fell into group four. I did the dust test. It fell into group five. All right, that place is pretty bad. Put those two together and say, I've had something in here a year. I would lean way more on the other side. You might want to think about getting rid of this. Then add in the part of, well, do you have mycotoxins in the house? Do you have bacterial toxins in the house? If you do, those are now biotoxins that are also floating around, and those are getting into the cushions. And then I would lean even more towards discarding something like that. But here's the thing. At the end of the day, it's not about what I think. It's not about frameworks that I'm giving you. It's not about any of that stuff. The only reason that you're listening to me right now and the only reason that you're reading this guide that you downloaded, right, you downloaded it good. If you didn't, cleanmymoldystuff.com go get it. The only reason you're looking at it is because mold is impacting your health. That's the only reason you're doing Any of this stuff. So you have to look at it at that lens. And then you have to take a step back and you have to say, is this thing here that I'm looking at more valuable on the long term than my health is? And I know that's such a black and white way to look at it. And the first feedback I'm going to get is I don't have the money to replace everything in my house, so I can't just look at it like that. And I get that. But you have to start. Start there. Okay? Start there and just start defining things like that. And then once you've gone through all the things that in your mind you can't really get rid of for finance reasons, then you look at all of them and you look at your finances and you understand what your budget is and what you can and can't replace. Not from an individual item perspective, but from a totality perspective. What is the total budget that I have available to replace or not replace things? Figure that out and then go down the items that are there and compare them to what category they fall in. Do they fall in do not clean, or do they fall in the items that can be cleaned or that you shouldn't clean or you should clean or whatever? You go through the guide and you see all that stuff, then what you want to do is you want to start at the item that is the most difficult to clean. You want to get rid of that one. Okay? And then you come down and you figure out where your budget is, where your break even is, and that's where you stop. So then you. It's not about one item anymore. It's not about this mattress. That's not what it's about. It's about, here's everything I have at my house. Here is if we're going to move and do all of these things and remediate and clean, here's the money I have towards replacing items. Okay, cool. And now let's start at the items that we know are the hardest to clean, and let's start applying those dollars there and work our way down. If you do it that way, you're getting the biggest bang for your buck. Not necessarily in the most items that you're cleaning, but. But the items that are going to be most problematic for you when you come back in the house, those are the ones that you're targeting and getting rid of. And that's how I would go through it. So it's so much more than the question of how do I know if I need to replace my mattress, which is the question sitting in front of me right now. Do you understand, like, the thought process and how we're going through all this stuff and you're building it out, Right. And that's kind of how you have to think through everything. So let me do another one. I just replaced my winter coat two weeks ago. Do I need to replace that? As it falls in the cannot clean or the do not clean category? Why does it fall in there? Because it's a puffy coat, right? So anything puffy falls into that. Now we're talking two weeks. Okay. How reactive are you? How bad is the space? All of these things, how long has it been in there? Put those together. Because the time is so low in the equation, even if you're very reactive, but the timing is really low, there might not be as much time for it to get heavily contaminated, potentially. Also think a coat is not the same as a cushion. You're not sitting on it constantly and opening the pores and shutting the pores. It's probably hanging in your closet. So it might not be as embedded in a coat as it would be in a bed, in a mattress and a couch cushion, something like that. So try to think through it that way. So for a winter coat that's been in a place for a couple of weeks, again, how bad is the place? Is it something that was really bad or is the place kind of bad? Is your reactivity level high or low? But I would say that's one of those things where probably go get it dry cleaned, see if that kind of knocks anything out of it. And then after that, you could put the coat on. Are you somebody who's reactive that's going to notice right away if something's going to trigger you? Some people are. So if that's the case, don't ask the question. Go do a little experiment. Have your coat dry cleaned, put it on, walk around for a half hour. How do you feel? Do you notice the reactions? Do you not notice the reactions? If you do, you've answered your own question right? Now. If you're somebody that takes a little longer, it might not be that easy. But you just need to be cognizant of your body and how it's feeling when you do. Wear it for a longer period of time. So wear it out for the night, for the day, see how you feel the next day, see how you feel that night, whatever it might be. And maybe make the decision that way. But I would be way less inclined to tell a client you've had a winter coat for two weeks. You have to get rid of it as opposed to, I've had a mattress for a year. Right. Like those are two different things. Mattresses are horizontal particles going to settle on it naturally. Then you sit on the mattress or lay on it opens up the pores, it gets in there. Jackets lie vertical. So you're not getting as much natural settlement on it. You're not sitting in it and opening the pores as much. So there's just variation in the type of item and what it is. I hope that helps answer some of these questions. These are two specific items, but more so this framework of how reactive are you, how bad is the house? And how long has the item been in the house? If you could think of it in those three ways. And then after you do that, then think through of all your items together in totality. And you have a budget for replacing items and cleaning items. Then go through them and say, okay, these are the things that technically I would be replacing if I was following the guide. These items up at the top are the ones that are in the Do Not Clean category. Let's say there's two up there. And then let's say there's five items that technically can be cleaned, but they're not ideal to be cleaned. You say, okay, I have X amount of dollars. I can withstand replacing one of the two items or two of the two items in the Do Not Clean category. And then everything else, I'm not going to replace them because I can't afford it. So then you go more towards the cleaning side and try to clean those. But the things that you replace are the things that are the most difficult to clean. And the things are going to be hanging on to the most contamination for the longest period of time. And you'll in theory get the biggest impact on doing it that way. So that is what I got for you today. Remember, go get this guide. I put a lot of time into building this thing. It's what I've been sharing with my clients for years and years. And then finally I sat down and wrote it all out. Every single word in this thing is straight from my mind and my fingertips. Nobody else wrote in this thing. I wasn't giving notes to somebody. I literally wrote every single word in this thing, all 18 pages of it. I wrote it all out. Graphs, guides, examples, all of that stuff. It's free right now. I may turn it into something that is not free in the future, but right now it is free. You are 6 silly for not getting this thing. Literally thousands of people have downloaded this thing in less than a month. It is the most popular thing that I've ever created, and it makes sense because of what I talked about at the top. So come get it. It's there. It's for you. I wanted to help you guys. And, yeah, that's it. So I'll talk to you guys next time.

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