Hi!

So we have a few projects going on here, one of which I’m particularly excited about. This winter has been particularly hard on us health-wise, as we were both sick for about a month without stop. We just couldn’t get over the coughing, the aches, throat pain, stuffy noses and sinuses, and headaches. Around the same time, we found some black mold growing on our walls, in certain corners of the house. Then we found more mold, and then more. We’d spray it with bleach, and in a week or so it would come back – sometimes in full force (like a resistant strain or something)…

So I found out online, that there are a few natural ingredients that you can use to get rid of mold in your house. Particularly, vinegar is helpful with this, and also baking soda. What happens when you combine the two together? Well, it starts to fizz like crazy, but it also becomes a (purportedly) excellent mold-killing solution. It’s because vinegar and baking soda both can kill mold on their own, but they each kill different strains of mold. When you combine the two together, you can target a broader range of mold types. Vinegar by itself can tackle about 84% of all mold species out there.

I made a combination of 1 tablespoon baking soda with about 1 and 1/2 cups straight-up apple cider vinegar. Most websites suggested using white vinegar, maybe on account that it won’t stain. However, we have a large stock of apple cider vinegar left over from trying to treat our throat bugs, so I figured I’d try it on the mold bugs in the wall. We’re also particularly treating wooden panels, so the color of the ACV actually won’t make a difference here. After mixing them up (and watching the FIZZ, which did not die down at all while I was using it), I dipped a sponge in it and coated the walls thoroughly with the mixture. The other thing that’s great about this concoction is that it can penetrate porous materials such as wood and certain ceramics, and attack the mold at the roots. You’re supposed to leave the mixture soaking in for about an hour. … I’m going to leave ours overnight, and see what happens.

One last thing that I’m a little worried about is that the ACV I got (which had 7% acidity, the highest I could find in the store) also contains a little sugar and honey. We can get trails of ant sometimes when we leave out sweet or sticky foods, so I’ll have to wait til tomorrow to see if our walls have turned into giant panels of swarming ants or not. Hopefully not.

EDIT: IT works!! Mold is disappearing from the panels, and there haven’t been any ants :D. Also, the vinegar smell is almost gone now. The only thing is… after a lot of fizzing, the vinegar and baking soda eventually deactivate each other. Which means that you can’t store the stuff — I tried to reuse the mixture the next morning, and it was no longer fizzy or acidic. So it’s better to mix it up and then use immediately.