Looking back almost 5 years, what would I have done differently, knowing now I am much healthier and may not have needed to get rid of my whole house of stuff. Our family suffered from CIRS, a mold illness and started treatment for it nearly 5 years ago. I have written several articles concerning how we cleaned our household items, cars, clothes etc. As time has passed and have met others who regret giving away everything due to a CIRS diagnosis, I decided I’d write an article, hoping to remind others, there’s hope in healing and remind others they may not need to so ambitiously purge their life of precious memories.

Ultimately, most of what I got rid of, I don’t regret: lots of house decorations, kids toys and books and ultimately my furniture. I will note, we kept much of our wood furniture for several years and just cleaned it, post CIRS diagnosis. It’s sort of impractical and expensive getting all new furniture when you might end up moving into another moldy house. It happened to us.

I kept sentimental stuff like scrap books and baby stuff and just put them in plastic bins to save away. Most of our art I donated because it was too overwhelming at the time and too dusty. We downsized a lot to just make it easier to clean and manage everything including half our Christmas stuff and lots of the boys toys and book. The boys recall now, missing their “stuff”. I miss memories of Christmas stuff I now realize I could have cleaned. I miss our every day hand made furniture my husband and I made pre kids which we ultimately gave away. 

On a positive note, less stuff has allowed us to live more simply with less clutter. In the last year and a half our family decided to become a full time rv family. We live in a Livin Lite CampLite 21 ft and love the change in mindset and freedom it has given us. More to come on this…

My recommendations:
1) Save what is meaningful, just put it away in plastic bins till you heal. Keep photos, scrapbooks, baby memories etc which you would regret throwing away. 

2) Don’t think being sick is the end of life and you will never be able to enjoy your stuff again. I remember feeling that way. It’s only a period in time. You will get through your illness and you will be able to take out those bins you saved and look through them again.

3) Furniture, linens and clothes, appliances and kitchenware etc are often cleanable. Check out my other posts on these topics.

4) Scan books which you want to preserve using a scanning service. We have used https://1dollarscan.com/about.php

Ultimately, living more simply to focus on healing with less distractions really did help us heal. God’s blessings to you in your journey to healing…

I have mixed feelings about my Molekule Air Purifiers. I used to love the Molekule, but with my recent experience living in a moldy military house and now an off gassing new house, my opinion is wavering. After all is said and done though, their customer service has been superb and my Molekule’s are again working well after actively off gassing our new house.

Positives:

They work well in a relatively stable healthy environment with at most only minor mold challenges and minor off gassing.

My kids and I can be in the same room as the Molekule and we have no sensitivities because there’s no ozone.

We can have guests with unique smells in our house to visit and our house can stay neutral smelling with clean fresh air.

It’s portable so the Molekule works perfect for taking with for stays in hotels.

The warranty and customer service are excellent! I have never had such good customer service. There’s a 60 day satisfaction guarantee policy and a 2 year limited warranty. All our Molekule’s got moldy in our recent 1 1/2 months living in a moldy military house and Molekule replaced all of them since they were under warranty still.

Negative:

Molekule’s can get moldy if you live in a moldy environment. All our Molekule’s got moldy in our recent 1 1/2 months living in a moldy military house but Molekule replaced all of them since they were under warranty still.

Our Molekule’s did not do well in our new off gassing house until we actively off gassed the house. What happened? Our Molekule’s started making the environment more metalic and uncomfortable for us within 2 weeks of use in our off gassing house. I discuss ways we off gassed our house in this blog: Environmental Impacts on Healing from CIRS and Lyme Disease. Once our house was mostly off gassed and the air mostly neutral, we resumed use of our Molekule’s after replacing the Peco and pre filter. If the Molekule’s are under warranty still, talk to Molekule about replacing the filters under warranty, if you notice your Molekule’s causing an unusual metalic odor due to your off gassing house. Now that our house is off gassed, my Molekule’s are working well again and it’s giving off clean fresh air.

They are expensive upfront but have a smaller filter expense per year compared to some filter based air purifiers.

They are room air purifiers only. If you own and can buy a whole house system, that is the best option. If you rent, 1) think about installing carbon and merv 13 filters in your air return vents. We buy our combined carbon and Merv 13 filters from Nordic Pure, made in the USA. 2) Also, think about what room air purifiers are best for you.

Why is it important to clear your clothes of mold? Clothes are a source of contamination that you need to address in order to fully heal from CIRS. Even after you move from a moldy environment to a healthy environment, if you do not clean your clothes properly, you bring mold and thus reactivity with you. I was ignorant of how to clean my families clothes properly until I met a good friend who’d been down the journey before me. I hope you can learn from this post to help your family heal.

Cleaning clothes, bedding, etc of mold spores is not as simple as washing them in the laundry machine.  Cleaning your clothes with both EC3 laundry additive and an ozone water producing machine, like PureWash is important because it kills off all mold spores and mycotoxins and keeps them from following you everywhere.

The PureWash is quite easy to set up attached to the laundry machine; the ozone water is important to kill off the mold spores. Make sure to wash clothes with both EC3 laundry additive and ozone water for at least the first few cycles to totally rid your clothes of mold spores. In the long run, you can use the ozone water alone to keep your clothes clean, unless it’s a particularly dirty load. Ozone water is definitely most cost effective.

The EC3 laundry additive is most beneficial to rid clothes of mycotoxins, although it helps with mold spores, so that’s why EC3 laundry additive and ozone water work so well together. The EC3 laundry additive alone does not clean clothes enough to purify moldy clothes after living in a moldy house. EC3 laundry additive is useful when you are on trips and don’t have access to ozone water though.

Things we learned while experimenting with our PureWash:

1) The first 2 months, the PureWash caused a large release of mycotoxins into the air during laundry loads. At first I thought it was the PureWash off gassing ozone, but I soon learned that the ozone water was actually breaking down the mold spores in the clothes (and also breaking down the mold in my moldy laundry drain pipe) and causing this release of mycotoxins. I’d walk into the laundry room and it was the mycotoxins which repulsed me. I started lighting an EC3 Air Purification Candle while doing laundry and it made a huge difference. I could walk in the room with no problems then.

2) If your laundry machine is a single washer and dryer like many European models and collects lint in the wash basin, make sure to clean the lint out regularly. That lint was collecting in ours and causing mytotoxin problems for us while doing laundry. Now that we clean it out regularly, I do not have an aversion to the laundry room.

3) The PureWash has a minor off gassing smell, although it’s tolerable as long as the above 2 considerations are met. I just close the laundry room door and it’s no problem. I can go in and out of the laundry room and the off gassing doesn’t cause problems.

On a side note, we set up our Purewash with a water hose also to make buckets of ozone water to put down drains and keep them mold free. You can also soak toys etc in ozone water, which works well. A side note: if you haven’t cleaned out all the sink traps including kitchen sink, garbage disposal, even laundry machine drain pipe, do this first.

For more info related to cleaning pipes with ozone water, check out my previous blog Do you need a perfect house to heal from CIRS?

 

Why is it important to clear your cars of mold? Cars are a source of contamination that you need to address in order to fully heal from CIRS.

Thankfully, we were able to clear our cars after recently living in a moldy home, which contaminated both our cars with mold. There were times I wasn’t sure we could clean them enough, but it was successful. We did not have to sell either car. It was a lot of work and shear endurance, but it worked!

How did we do it?

1) We purchased an ozone machine to 1^st ozone the cars. We closed up the car and let the ozone machine run for 2 hours. Then, we let the car sit, closed up, for about 1 day. Car and ventilation system was turned off while ozoning the car.

2) We removed filters from the car’s ventilation system. You can do this before or after ozoning it. From what I understand, ozone passes through the filters and permeates everything.

3) Next, we fogged with EC3 by Micro Balance the entire car and ventilation system. We fogged at the inlet of the car vent system on the exterior, often found near front windshield; the car ventilation system was turned on, set on exterior air mode. Then, we set the air control on recirculation mode and fogged the interior of the car. We fogged the ventilation system and the inside of our car several times. Then, we turned our car on high fan mode and high heat in order to circulate and dry out the car.

4) Then, we replaced the car ventilation filters with a dual hepa and carbon filter. I believe they are made for most car models.

Tips: Fogging with EC3 or ozone treatment alone did not clean our cars fully. The reason, ozone destroys the mold spores but leaves the mycotoxins. EC3 destroys the mycotoxins as well as mold spores. EC3 alone did not permeate the car enough to clean out the ventilation system without the ozone treatment. A friend of mine pre the existence of EC3 had to sell both cars because ozone alone would not clear her cars of mold. Thankfully, there is EC3 now. When we ozoned our car and then fogged it with EC3, our car became happy for us.

The biggest thing – We work together as a family to clean our house and it makes a huge difference. It’s not all Mom’s job, especially when we are all suffering from chronic illness. It has to be a team effort!

Saturday morning my husband and I vacuum and mop the floors and change the sheets biweekly. We do dusting, clean drapes, toilets etc on a rotating schedule. We put money aside to have a cleaner 1 time a month to clean whatever we don’t get to and it alleviates some of our stress so we can spend more time with the kids.

We use EC3 mold solution concentrate as our go to cleaner to clean our house. It simplifies cleaning and it’s nontoxic for kids and animals and there is no strong odor to it.

Cleaning our clothes with both EC3 laundry additive and an ozone water producing machine, like PureWash is important because it kills off all mold spores and mycotoxins on clothes and keeps them from following you everywhere. The PureWash is quite easy to set up attached to the laundry machine. In the longterm, you can use the PureWash by itself, but just starting off, you will need to use both EC3 laundry additive and ozone water together to clear your clothes of spores and mycotoxins. Check out my blog specific to How to Clean Your Clothes of Mold After Living in a Moldy House

We set up our Purewash with a water hose also to make buckets of ozone water to put down drains and keep them mold free. A side note: if you haven’t cleaned out all the sink traps including kitchen sink, garbage disposal, even laundry machine drain pipe and used a brush to scrub out top down of each drain, do this first. Ozone water can also be used to soak and clean toys for example. It’s useful and inexpensive.

Since we bought a Molekule air purifier, our air stays much cleaner and healthier for us. My kids and I can be in the same room as the Molekule and we have no sensitivities. Prior to the Molekule, we tried the Air Oasis, but I returned it because it could only be running while I was out of the room. I was sensitive to the ozone I believe. What we like about the Molekule, we can have guests with unique smells in our house to visit and our house can stay neutral smelling with clean fresh air. Here’s my latest review of our Molekules after 11 months of use and multiple environments. Do I Like the Molekule Air Purifier?

We have friends to thank for cleaning help along our healing journey. When my husband and I had no more energy to clean and still quite sick with CIRS, we had friends come to help clean and organize. It made all the difference. It’s important to ask for help.

For more info related to cleaning and CIRS check out my previous blog Do you need a perfect house to heal from CIRS?

We did not need the perfect house after all in order to heal from CIRS. Here’s our journey and what helped us clean our home. The moldy pipes were the biggest problem.

By the time we got diagnosed with CIRS we had moved out of the CIRS inducing moldy house. We live in a 10-year old rental house though, not ideal but in good condition. From onset of diagnosis with CIRS, my husband and I continually asked ourselves whether we could stay in our current house. The house itself had 10 years of dust and grime, no major water damage but lots of small stuff like moldy pipes and a slightly moldy bathroom shower.

Here are a few big things we learned in the process of cleaning and healing from CIRS.

We started feeling healthier in our house after beginning to use EC3 mold solution concentrate to clean our house. What’s awesome is you can wipe down surfaces using one cloth and kill mold spores, mycotoxins, and bacteria along the way. It simplifies cleaning and it’s nontoxic for kids and animals and there is no strong odor to it. We clean our house and cars using it. EC3 is a game changer when it comes to cleaning and getting healthy from CIRS. You can fog rooms with it also and minimize your work.

PIPES!!! Our pipes were moldy! 10 years of use covered the pipes with loads of gunk and mold. How did we figure out the pipes were a HUGE problem? As we started recovering from CIRS for example, I noticed funky smells and felt weird after washing dishes. I couldn’t figure out why until we realized the kitchen pipes and garbage disposal were VERY moldy. We cleaned out all the sink traps including kitchen sink, garbage disposal, even laundry machine drain pipe and used a brush to scrub out top down of each drain. Boy, our house smelled so much better after doing that. It was at that point I started to become biotoxin negative on my VCS score. Our house had become healthy for us!

It’s important to get rid of old couches, rugs, chairs, etc. As we started down the journey towards cleaning and healing we realized our stuff was super dusty. Our couch for example was 15 years old and looked beautiful but held loads of dust. When we removed it from our house, it started smelling more neutral. The same happened when we got rid of upholstered reading chairs, rugs, etc. My new favorite sofa is the Knopparp from Ikea. It has a washable cover and it’s made of all metal and doesn’t off gas.

De-cluttering our house and sorting through old dusty stuff is important for recovery too. We originally had photos everywhere as I love photography and pictures of our kids. Those photos though held years of dust and also made it very tough to keep things clean when I had so little energy. We took down all the photos and it was one thing which led our house to be more neutral smelling. For now, we laminated photo collages and placed them on our kitchen table so we can enjoy photos and have them be washable and healing for us.

We love books but we realized we must get rid of old books, which store loads of dust. Our plan is to scan those books with a book scanner so we can eventually read them. For now, our kids have a new selection of their favorite books but we just keep them in plastic bins to cut down on dust and they have made a new routine of it.

We made our rooms a healing respite. We took out our pictures and clutter which needs to be cleaned and dusted regularly. We still have wood dressers but not much else besides a few books held in plastic bins. Our closet holds stuff in plastic bins to keep dust down and help decrease the need to clean as regularly.

A few other suggestions I will follow up with in additional posts like How we do it: What helps keep our house healthy here and now?.

Cleaning our clothes with EC3 laundry additive and  PureWash by Greentech, an ozone water producing machine is important because it kills off all mold spores and mycotoxins on clothes and keeps spores from following you everywhere. We set up our Purewash with a water hose also to make buckets of ozone water to put down drains and keep them mold free. Read my post How to Clean Your Clothes of Mold After Living in a Moldy House for more information on using EC3 laundry additive and the Purewash.

A Molekule air purifier has helped us keep our air clean and healthy too. My kids and I can be in the same room as the Molekule and we have no sensitivities. Prior to the Molekule, we tried the Air Oasis, but I returned it because it could only be running while I was out of the room. I was sensitive to the ozone I believe. What we like about the Molekule, we can have guests with unique smells in our house to visit and our house can stay neutral smelling with clean fresh air. Here’s my latest review of our Molekules after 11 months of use and in multiple environments. Do I Like the Molekule Air Purifier?

I wrote this blog about 6 months into our journey after diagnosis with CIRS. At the time, I didn’t realize how much our environment beyond mold, affected our health.  I now realize, 1 1/2 years into CIRS treatment that a perfect house and toxin free environment is not absolutely necessary, but it sure helps with healing. I wrote Environmental Impacts on Healing from CIRS and Lyme Disease.