The Need to Breath 2--Air Quality in our Homes

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, "The Need to Breathe", breathing is VERY important!

I have had another issue in times past that has bothered my own breathing--black mold!

Fortunately, we found it in our carpeting in the basement of our Pennsylvania house in about a 12" diameter space and got it out of the house immediately. When we did that, we uncovered the source and as it turns out, it was water damage to our foundation.

The wood paneling behind the kids in this picture is where we had a slow leak. It was truly amazing when all of it was taken care of, how much the moisture affected our home.

So what did we do?

We took a multi frontal approach at the time. If given the same issue, I'd do it the same way again, but on a larger scale. We started with taking all the old wood panelling off the walls and burning them. With those things you can't put them anywhere but in a dumpster, so we decided burning those would help. With the carpeting, we just put it by the road for the trash company to pick up.

We dug up the front part of our house, sealed the foundation, then put in gravel and french drains, covering the drains with landscape fabric so that it would catch the water instead of getting clogged with more gravel.

On the inside after removing the paneling and carpeting, we blew multiple fans and dehumidifiers for a couple of days until the wetness on the concrete wall was gone. Then we used Dry Lock on the inside. I remember my husband coating the entire wall multiple times. He did the entire front of the house up to the garage so we wouldn't have any more issues.

Black mold

What is Black Mold?

"If you can see or smell mold, a health risk may be present. You do not need to know the type of mold growing in your home, and CDC does not recommend or perform routine sampling for molds. No matter what type of mold is present, you should remove it. Since the effect of mold on people can vary greatly, either because of the amount or type of mold, you cannot rely on sampling and culturing to know your health risk."

Black mold can be the culprit of quite a few breathing issues, so do not wait to get the issue taken care of because your health and the health of your family is at stake! I have a friend who had to get rid of 95% of their clothes and personal belongings because the mold spores were on their clothes, in their furniture, and curtains. They had to start from scratch. Everything that could not be wiped down well, had to be gotten rid of.

According to the CDC,

“In most cases mold can be removed from hard surfaces by a thorough cleaning with commercial products, soap and water, or a bleach solution of no more than 1 cup of bleach in 1 gallon of water. Absorbent or porous materials like ceiling tiles, drywall, and carpet may have to be thrown away if they become moldy.

If you have an extensive amount of mold and you do not think you can manage the cleanup on your own, you may want to contact a professional who has experience in cleaning mold in buildings and homes. It is important to properly clean and dry the area as you can still have an allergic reaction to parts of the dead mold and mold contamination may recur if there is still a source of moisture.”

The issue with most of the cleaning suggested is bleach. For me, bleach usage of any kind throws my breathing in to a full blown asthma like attack where I can hardly breathe. Recovery from this type of thing takes a full hour, if not longer, including laying down for the rest of the day from the headache and taxing it causes my body.

What can I do?

The suggestion above is soap and water OR bleach, so we've been using soap and water to clean our home with, specifially Thieves Household Cleaner. This cleaner is completely non-toxic and plant based, which kills 99.9% of germs and bacteria. Go ahead and look up the essential oils in this cleaner...google them, "Benefits of _____" and see all the awesomeness they help with!

*Cinnamon
*Clove

*Lemon

*Eucalyptus

*Rosemary

And don't worry about the price, folks! When you click "Subscribe" and you make your account through Young Living, you automatically save 24%. Additionally, with this one 14.4oz bottle you can make 20 spray bottles of Thieves spray cleaner and clean your home with it! Just add one cap full of Thieves to 20 ounces of water and you've got a completely organic, cleaner that helps keep your home clean and helps to get rid of so many germs and bacteria! For me that's 20 weeks of non-toxic cleaning goodness for everything in my home and outside my home! I love knowing that I'm using a cleaner that won't send me in to an asthmatic type of response when I clean!

Want to learn more about this powerful cleaning product that has helped my breathing issues?

I am sharing more information about how this stuff works and how to get your hands on it for your entire household on Thursday July 22nd at 7PM EST. Send me a personal message, email, comment below, send a smoke signal if you need to, but you don't want to miss this information!

This product along with diffusing, ridding our home of mold, and throwing out all synthetic toxic chemicals have made a HUGE difference in the air quality in my home.

Love & God Bless,