Your bathroom breeds mold due to low ventilation, humidity, warmth, and partly your level of cleanliness. While mildew won’t make you sick, it can reduce your restroom beauty, which says a lot about your level of hygiene. This is why you need to rid your shower curtain mold; this article will show how.
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Why you should worry about mold
Imagine you are staying over at a friend’s place. You enter the guest room for a quick shower, but the whole shower curtain is mold-infested.
How would you feel? Scary, right!
Now imagine if this were you hosting your friend…
Though you don’t have to worry about a dirty shower curtain making you sick, you should be concerned about the bad image of a dirty bathroom. Not only that, it could affect your health if you are sensitive to air pollution.
Health experts agree that bathroom breeds all kinds of bacteria, including mold on your shower curtain. Though mold may not pose an immediate health risk, it can cause body odor and give room to opportunistic infections if left to linger.
What is mold?
It is a type of fungi that grows in multi-cellular structures known as hyphae. It can appear as black, green, orange, white, or purple. They produce spores that spread around your bathroom by floating around in the air.
Mold is natural to the environment and thrives in places with prolonged moisture, warmth, and darkness. You will find them around leaks in roofs, pipes, wet windows, or shower curtains.
Also, they thrive well on paper products, cardboard, ceiling tiles, and wood products and grow with ease on paints, dust, carpet, wallpaper, drywall, insulation, fabric, and upholstery.
What you’ve been missing
How to Remove Mold from Painted Walls
How To Remove Mold Under Vinyl Flooring
How to Clean Shower Tiles Without Scrubbing
What Are the Different Kinds of Mold?
Mold comes in different forms and types. The common strains found in bathrooms include aspergillus, Penicillium, Cladosporium, Alternia, and Stachybotrys.
Among these variants, the most hazardous is Stachybotrys.
Stachybotrys, also called black mold, appears green/black. It can cause serious symptoms in sensitive persons.
Symptoms of black mold infection include memory loss, headaches, skin irritation, nausea, asthma, etc.
What are the Causes of Molds in Shower Curtains?
Mold thrives in damp, dark, and low ventilation area, and what could better describe the bathroom?
Thus, your shower curtain in the bathroom is a breeding ground for mold.
A study conducted in America shows that people do more in the bathroom than take a shower.
It reveals that…
- 81% of men and 73% of women frequent the bathroom to urinate.
- 61% reported having sex in the bathroom.
- 65% shave in the bathroom.
- 33% brush their teeth in the bathroom.
All these activities, plus showering, contribute to the moisture and dampness of the bathroom and are the reasons it breeds mold.
Why You Need to Rid Your Shower Curtain of Mold
Mildew emits musty smells that may cause allergies. They are generally disgusting to allow in your home. Your bathroom needs proper sanitation because it’s an abode for comfort and safety.
You will be compromising the purposes of your home and bathroom if you let mold thrive in your house.
Here are reasons to get rid of mold:
- The mold on the shower curtain is unsightly and disgusting.
- A dirty and unpleasant bathroom can embarrass you when used by a visitor.
- Mold can give room to opportunistic infections and cause health crises.
- It contributes to respiratory illnesses as it aggravates asthma and allergies.
- Mold can spread germs in your home and put everyone at risk.
Remember, mold on your shower curtain could attract different bacteria that may harm your family.
Symptoms of mold exposure
Mold exposure could result in the following symptoms:
- Sneezing
- Wheezing
- Coughing
- Sore throat
- Skin rashes
- Nasal congestion
- Eye irritation
What if my shower curtain is not dirty?
A clean shower curtain can still attract mold. These annoying fungi don’t care if the environment is dirty or not; they grow on any damp surface. As long as your shower curtain is hung in the bathroom, they can get mold.
How to Get Mold Out of Fabric Shower Curtain
Expert cleaners share the secrets of cleaning your shower curtain without endangering your health.
Three tried and trusted ways to remove mold from your shower curtain are following.
1. Laundry detergent washing
This option is the best way to remove mold in the early stages.
The following process will get your shower curtain clean and mold-free.
- Remove the shower curtain from the hanger and take out the rings.
- Head to the laundry to wash with plain detergent.
- Set your machine to a gentle cycle and wash the curtain in warm water.
- Thoroughly rinse your curtains and spread them in the sun to dry.
- Return your curtain shower to the bathroom back in position.
- Do a vinegar mixture and water spray and use it on your curtain.
- Use the mixture to spray your curtain and allow ventilation and the sun to shine into your bathroom.
2. Baking soda and hydrogen peroxide treatment
The best cleaning treatment is baking soda and hydrogen peroxide if your shower curtain has been substantially stained with a mold colony.
This mixture will do magic on your curtain. Here’s how it’s done:
- Remove the shower curtain from the hanger and take out the rings.
- Apply the paste onto the mold-affected spots on both sides of the curtain.
- Let it sit for up to 45 minutes to dry and kill the molds.
- Toss your shower curtain into the laundry machine for a thorough normal wash.
- Thoroughly rinse the curtain to remove any leftover mixture.
- Dry in the sun before returning it to the shower.
3. Oxygen bleach treatment
If you figured the mold infection on your shower curtain is beyond ordinary, the best cleaning option is oxygen bleach treatment.
This diluted bleach is best for cleaning white curtains because of the bleach’s ability to discolor colored material.
This is how to clean mold from your white shower curtain with an oxygen bleach solution:
- Leave the curtain hanging, preferably outside, to allow for proper spray.
- Thoroughly spray the diluted bleach onto the mold-stain areas.
- Allow it to sit for a few minutes while preparing your laundry machine.
- Using warm water, add the recommended amount of bleach to the laundry machine.
- Toss the shower curtains in the machine and run the normal cycle for up to 20 minutes.
- Be sure the rinse cycle runs sufficiently to remove any trace of the bleach.
- Remove curtain and spread to dry sufficiently before returning it to your bathroom.
How to Get Rid Your Shower Curtain of Mold
In matters of home and home improvement, prevention is better than cure!
You can save yourself needless worry if you maintain simple prevention of mold by following these tips:
- Run your bathroom exhaust vent. During and after your shower, run the exhaust vent for at least 30 minutes. This will reduce bathroom moisture and dampness and prevent mold.
- Squeegee your tub or shower walls after use. Doing this will reduce bathroom moisture.
- Fix leaks. Constant leaking and wetness breed mold and accelerate its spread.
- Wash your towels and bath mats regularly. Wash and dry your towel and mat often. It helps to prevent mold growth and unpleasant odors.
- Remove bath items. Try to remove bath materials (sponge, towel, bushes, etc.) from your bathroom. They promote mold growth.
- Keep your toilet seat cover closed when flushing. It prevents the spread of opportunistic germs.
Final thoughts
Regular cleaning of your shower curtain shields you from mold and unnecessary bacteria attacks. While mold isn’t dangerous, it can be an accomplice for opportunistic diseases to attack you. How do you clean your shower curtain? I would love to learn from you. Please share your thoughts in the comment.