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Leaving your home and belongings is no easy feat. It’s true that home is where the heart is- it holds your memories, your possessions, your family. It’s where you welcome friends, celebrate holidays, enjoy meals, and rest your head each night. The home you curate is the backdrop of your life. But what happens when that home becomes the source of physical and mental illness for you and your family? Then a choice must be made to prioritize your health by leaving or staying in that home as the focus becomes how to get out of a moldy home.
There is no shortage of stories of people who have lost everything to toxic mold- their friends, family, home, job, health, and all of their worldly possessions. Some people say they don’t have to get rid of their belongings to get better; others say they don’t have to leave their homes. I’ve even read stories of people claiming they’ve improved their health without moving, remediating, or getting rid of their belongings- without doing anything to address their exposure to mold. You are the only person who will know the right solution for you- nobody else can tell you what to do. You have to find your own roadmap for how to get out of a moldy home. This post is all about some things to consider when contemplating how to get out of mold. And if you’ve just found mold in your home and need help with the next steps, start here.
Why Mold is a Problem
Mold is neurotoxic, meaning that it’s harmful to our brains and therefore, our bodies. It can negatively impact nearly every system in the body, especially the nervous system, immune system, respiratory system, and digestive system, leading to symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, feeling stressed, never feeling rested, constipation and diarrhea (not absorbing food well), pain in joints, and even psychosis. While all of these symptoms might not sound too bad (minus psychosis), imagine these symptoms taking over your life and deteriorating your identity. Years of insomnia, feeling on edge, losing your memory and cognition, and dealing with digestive issues. It wears on you. It sucks the life out of you.
At the height of toxic mold exposure, I felt like a shell of myself. I remember my husband wanted to play a simple card game we’ve played hundreds of times and I just couldn’t keep up- I couldn’t process quickly enough to play and I kept forgetting what I was working towards. I felt so stressed playing this game that I once loved because I couldn’t focus and I felt so, so tired. I also felt so overwhelmed and empty. I melted into a puddle of tears. It wasn’t about the game; it was that I realized how much I had been impacted by the mold in that moment. Not sure if you’re sick from mold? Check out this post to learn about the symptoms.
Why Some People Get Sick & Some People Don’t
Some people appear to not be impacted by toxic mold. Some people say it’s because people who are susceptible have a specific HLA-DR gene, which is a human leukocyte antigen. This gene supposedly reduces the capacity of the immune system to react and excrete toxins. I think this theory is limited because you can read several stories of people who’ve been in mold and their pets were just as sick, if not more, than they were, and as canines, they don’t have human genes. In my case, my dogs were sick in toxic mold and improved with gentle detox since after settling into a healthy home.
We do not yet have an understanding of the definitive science to explain why some people get sick and others don’t, but here’s my theory: we all have a tolerance level for the amount of toxins we can handle until we become sick. Once we hit our individual limits for the amount of toxins we can tolerate, we become more susceptible to many different things and minute things causing illness. It’s similar to how we all have a level of frustration we can tolerate before we snap, and some days, once you snap, it can leave you primed to snap more easily throughout the rest of the day.
We accumulate toxins from unprocessed emotions, trauma, stress, ultraprocessed food, pesticides, tap water, cheaply made clothing, construction materials, furniture, environmental toxins like mold and bacteria, heavy metals, parasites, chronic infections like Lyme and Bartonella, and chemicals in personal care, cosmetics, and cleaning products.
Should You Stay or Should You Go?
This is the hardest question to answer when figuring out how to get out of mold. There is no easy answer. Both solutions are devastating, expensive, and painful. If you’re renting, you lose your possessions, but not your investment in the house. If you own the home, you’ve got to figure out if you remediate or move. In any scenario where you leave, you must also consider where you’ll go, which is another challenge we’ll explore in this post. Let’s lay out all the options and take a look at them.
Choosing to Stay
If you think you might be sick from toxic mold, it’s highly likely that you’re going to hear from family, friends, western medicine doctors, and society-at-large that toxic mold isn’t an issue. Because of all of that messaging and invalidation, you might choose to stay in your home and take no interventions in your environment. You may choose to see a doctor, or even a few doctors, but you will likely have your concerns dismissed. This makes it really hard to make the best decision for you when you’re trying to figure out how to get out of a moldy home and everyone is telling you your worries and fears and even your sickness isn’t legitimate.
Right before I found a mold-literate functional medicine practitioner to work with, I had run of the mill blood work run, and I was told that everything was fine and normal, even though I didn’t feel fine and normal. Western medicine focuses on each system of the body as separate, ignores environmental health, and treats disease instead of preventing it. The ranges for “health” are also wider in western medicine, including ranges of concern where lifestyle changes could potentially prevent disease. Just to be clear, I am not anti-western medicine. If I’m in a car accident or an emergency situation, I want to be treated with all the modern medical technology we have, but I think the system is very limited for preventing disease beyond screening.
It may also be overwhelming to think of what remediating and/or moving would be like when you’re trying to figure out how to get out of a moldy home. Either option uproots your life. Some people can’t tolerate the thought, so they stay without further intervention because it’s simply just too much to fathom. This is especially true if the mold in your home is hidden. Many homes with mold problems look beautiful and even pristine on the outside, but have dark, toxic secrets growing hidden out of sight.
If a person chooses to stay in toxic mold, I believe it’s highly unlikely for them to get better or even stabilize. I believe their health will most likely continue to decline because they continue to be exposed to the source of what is impacting their immune system and overall functioning. I’m a therapist, so here’s a metaphor with that lens: if I child lives in a home where they experience abuse, the child’s functioning is unlikely to improve until the abuse can be stopped by an intervention, even if the child entered therapy. One 45 minute weekly session with a therapist would be something, but without working with the caregivers to stop the abuse, the child wouldn’t really feel better. Unless we stop the source of what’s causing harm in any scenario, I don’t know how someone can feel better. This is the same reason why society is fighting back so hard on racism lately- people can’t feel valued and can’t be healthy until we stop the source of harm.
While this option saves the most money financially on the surface level, it may end up costing more in terms of healthcare bills, and it will likely cost a person their health and vitality. I know of an elderly couple living in toxic mold who has chosen to stay and ignore the problem, and they don’t have the energy or capacity to see their grandchildren because of how sick they are. It’s really sad to watch.
If you do choose to say in toxic mold, don’t let fear be the reason. You have options, and you have power. The options might not be the ones you want, but you have options. You can figure this out on the other side. And if you’re working to figure out how to get out of a moldy home, here are 10 powerful things you can do to support yourself in the meantime.
Staying and Remediating
Some people who choose to stay in their homes choose to attempt to remediate the toxic mold problem as their solution for how to get out of a moldy home. Remediation is where a homeowner hires professionals to come in and remove the toxic mold with the intention of restoring environmental safety to the home. I read a lot of stories in forums of people who’ve been impacted by toxic mold who said they couldn’t tolerate their homes after remediation.
Two logical reasons for this jump out at me: 1. It’s impossible and impractical to be able to remove literally every microscopic remnant of mycotoxins and bacteria from a home. If a person has become so sensitive to mold from the home they are living it, it would make sense that it would be difficult to tolerate the particular makeup of mold and bacteria in the place where they got sick. It’s just like how we can feel more triggered by people in the present moment who remind us of people or scenarios in the past that were challenging for us. 2. Most remediations are done poorly and fail because there are no formal guidelines and standards enforced for how to remove mold.
We also must acknowledge that even poor remediation is extravagantly expensive. And the best companies are outrageously priced (Read more about the economics of toxic mold here). I don’t know many people who can afford remediation, and most insurance companies don’t cover it (I called when moving to see if I could protect my next house with any company to avoid this disaster happening again). On the high end, one company I spoke with offered an estimate of nearly $200,000 with the rebuilding costs included, but they couldn’t guarantee that the home would be tolerable after remediation. That’s a substantial gamble.
There were a couple stories here and there that I read in the forums of people who remediated and were able to move back into their homes without issue. It could be that many people don’t follow up and share the good news when remediation works.
Remediating then Moving
Remediation the home and then moving is another solution for how to get out of a moldy home. This is another financially expensive option, although it has the potential to be a great investment in your health. As I mentioned, there are many levels of remediation, and remediation is not regulated. The bad news about this is that if you’re remediating to stay in a home, the odds aren’t in your favor that it will be enough for you. If you’re moving, this could be great because you can address the problem as best as you can financially, and then move to a safer home for you. We also know that not everyone gets sick from mold. Perhaps the remediation that isn’t enough for you is tolerable for someone else.
Choosing to Move
A final option when considering how to get out of a moldy home is to just pack up and move. Some people choose to move without any other environmental intervention. This was pretty rare from what I saw in the forums, or at least people didn’t disclose that they chose to move without trying to make repairs in the home. But when you move into a new home and find an issue, it’s hard to say if the previous owners knew about it or not, which is why the past few years in the housing market have been very risky since it was expected for people to waive home inspections (although most run-of-the-mill home inspections do not include mold anyway). And of course, all homes have issues. No home is perfect. Some issues are just more manageable than others.
If you choose to move, there are two major logistical hurdles: finding a new home, and preventing contamination in your new home.
Finding a Healthy Home
Let me be straight with you: there is no such thing as a mold-free home. This is such a devastating thing to learn when you’ve gotten sick from mold. It’s scary. You wonder what will healthy enough and if you’ll ever be able to heal. When you’re sick, any bit of mold feels like too much, and it makes sense. If a person has the capacities and resources to figure out how to get out of a moldy home, they are often hypervigilant, not only because the mold has cost them so much, but because exposure to mold has an impact on a person’s nervous system. Chronic exposure to mold tells the nervous system it’s never safe and it needs to stay in fight-or-flight all the time. This leads to the classic “tired but wired” feeling.
What you are searching for is a low-mold home. You can reduce your risk of exposure in a new home by learning to visually inspect for mold, as well as using an ERMI to test. I know the ERMI gets a lot of flack and it’s certainly not perfect or affordable, AND it’s the best and most accessible tool we have currently. If you want to learn more about the ERMI and how to test, this post is for you. Learning to visually inspect for water damage (which leads to mold) will help tremendously. Out of the 100 homes I toured, only 4 passed visual inspection, meaning that only 4 homes did not show signs of water damage. Take this informal statistic for what you will, but 96% of the homes I toured had signs of water damage and a high likelihood of mold. I’ve got this post on how to find a low mold home if you need some guidance when you’re figuring out how to get out of a moldy home and not move right into another moldy home.
A note about flipped homes: they are likely to have hidden water damage as most flippers want to make the most money they can with as little investment as possible, so they buy cheap homes (read: homes with water damage), and then focus on cosmetic principles only in order to make a profit. Behind the gleaming countertops and new drywall often lurks deadly toxic mold. If you are looking at flipped homes, I highly recommend considering an ERMI so you know what you’re getting into.
Saving Your Belongings
Once you’ve figured out how to get out of a moldy home, it’s time to figure out how to get the mold out of your possessions so you don’t bring all of that toxic stew with you. Microscopic particles from the mold coat the surface of everything it encounters. Some items that are non-porous, like metal, glass, crystal, ceramic, hard plastic, and potentially sealed wood, have the potential to be cleaned. Porous objects, like upholstered furniture (sofa, chairs, ottomans, headboards), mattresses, rugs, luggage, baskets, unsealed wood, paper (books, documents, photos), soft plastic, are difficult to salvage since there is no current method that removes the remnants of mold from these surfaces. These guidelines have been so helpful and they’re what I used when moving to determine what to keep, what to get rid of, what to donate, and what to try to clean.
So, yes, I’m telling you that I trashed all of my furniture from when living in mold. My husband took an axe to our dressers and we put them out with the trash to avoid anyone else getting exposed, and the rest of the furniture went to the dump. It was really challenging to do, and I didn’t want anyone else to get sick like I did.
Clothing
As for clothing, it’s porous and it’s complicated. The Surviving Toxic Mold guidelines are really helpful in sorting out which fabrics can be washed. I used the system recommended on their website for washing clothes by putting each load through three washes: the first wash is in ammonia, the second in borax, and the third in epsom salt before they move to the dryer. My experience was that the heavier I go on the ammonia, the more clothes are salvaged- perhaps about 90% of the load. The more I tried to conserve ammonia, the fewer clothes I could save- maybe about 40-50% came out clean from this process.
<The least fun part is that I would smell every article of clothing after it’s been dried. If it smelled like the moldy house I lived in, it needed to be rewashed or trashed. If it smelled clean, I washed it in EC3, which is a laundry additive to kill mold, and brought it into my home. I had a two wash rule, meaning that if an article of clothing went through the entire three-wash process twice and still smelled like the moldy home I lived in, I trashed it. If you’re wondering if you’ll be able to identify the smell, as I was before I moved, the smell of the moldy home I lived in became quite obvious and intense to me once I moved out of mold. The worst part of this process wasn’t getting rid of clothing for me, but how awful I would feel after smelling a few articles of clothing that smelled like the old house. All my old symptoms would come rushing back from even such minor exposure.
Letting Go of Your Belongings
I understand that is sounds extreme to leave behind a home you love and most of your possessions. It is extreme. And when you’ve tried everything else, when you’ve read as much of the research and science available as possible, when you’re tired of living your life on pause waiting to feel better, you’ll do anything- anything– to feel like yourself again.
For me, the anticipation of loss was more intense than the actual loss itself. For months, I dreaded the loss. How would we afford to replace everything? How would we live in the interim? How much would it hurt to throw out everything I’d worked to hard to buy and care for over the years?
Truthfully, I was surprised by what I could live without when the time came. It was frustrating to know that I had things, but had to purge them, or they weren’t yet cleaned for use. Overall, though, it really gave me perspective on what’s important, which is my health and my family- most material things can be replaced, but there is no replacement for good health and loving relationships. That’s ultimately why I chose to move- the financial piece was nothing compared to the cost of my health and relationships if I had stayed.
For those very few items that hold sentimental value and are irreplaceable, I packed them into a sealed bin that lives in storage. I can’t access them without being exposed all over again, but it feels good to have them. I also made a list of things that are important and replaceable, like my wedding album and photographs. I took pictures of them and put them in an album on my phone so I have them if I want to recreate gallery walls as I had in the moldy house.
The first few weeks after getting out of mold were challenging, as you can imagine. I am an organized person and I made lists in order of priority, filled my online shopping carts with essentials, and thought through as many scenarios as possible, and it was still overwhelming. I was absolutely functioning in survival mode, especially at first. I remember going to Target with my husband to grab essentials right after the move and he bought a week’s worth of clothes. I could think only through the next 24 hours and bought just one outfit for the next day. But, like anything, my nervous system settled over time as I got used to my new normal, and I had increased capacity to think farther into the future.
Tell me your questions and your stories as you’ve contemplated and figured out how to get out of a moldy home.
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