| | |  Vallarta Living | July 2008 
Help! My Clothes are Growing Mushrooms!
 Pamela Thompson - PVNN
Here in Puerto Vallarta, the summer months bring sudden downpours, turtles, lush green vegetation, longer siestas, glowing skin, boisterous thunder - and a whole lot of humidity.
My beautiful patio garden plants sprout mushrooms over night (and not the kind I could throw in a salad!) Tapping my laundry room wall, the paint falls off amidst a pile of funky looking fuzz. Belt buckles that are not wrapped air tight turn a strange looking teal green color.
My friend Andrea, who is spending her first summer in Puerto Vallarta full-time sent out a plea for help to her friends that said: "Help! My clothes are getting all grow-dee in the closet in this heat and humidity here in Puerto Vallarta, you know, like stuff is growing on them. Ick. I don't have air conditioning and the design of this casa, which is very open, preclude that. How do you manage to deal with keeping your clothing nice and decent this time of year?"
(My initial thought was to write to Andrea and tell her not to worry about wearing clothes in the summer. Absolutely not necessary!)
Andrea received numerous responses to her email, that we felt might be of use to others in the area - so here they are:
I put plastic sheets inside the doors to my clothes cupboards which I get from the plastic covers that come back from the dry cleaners. I stick the plastic to the wood on the inside of the cupboards with a glue stick and it seems to work, ok?
Wipe the walls down with bleach - that removes the mold. Keep the door ajar a bit and yes that's why I have a low-wattage (25w) light in there. I also use some calcium (I think) crystals that absorb water and empty out the water and refill it with crystals from time to time.
The Damp Rid has calcium chloride in case you can't find it but can find another similar product. I toss out water it has absorbed all the time. Also believe it or not, more than one source has told me Febreeze Spray takes away the smell of the mold.
Also keep things from touching the walls of the closet and try not to jam too much in there. If it's a general problem, keep furniture like couches away from outside walls - when I first moved I had a couch against the wall and when I moved it once to vacuum was horrified to see the wall was black with mold.
I hear there's a gyrating dehumidifier at Costco for only $700 pesos.
When we were away from our house in PV, we moved everything (clothes, shoes, linen pillows) into one room that was closed (had a window and a door) and put in a dehumidifier with the water running into a tube out to the sidewalk. The mattresses which were too big to get up the winding staircase to the room, always had to be aired out and Feebreezed.
I know you can buy some "granules" at Costco which will help in a very small space (small closet) but it would have to be pretty air tight to be effective.
Go to Sam's and buy one of those oscillating columnar fans. Can't remember the cost, but they are cheap. Then hook it up in your closet and have it rotate back and forth on your clothes. If you don't have an outlet in there, get an extension cord. It really works. We keep ours going the entire time we are gone, and no longer have a problem with moldy clothes. I've tried those jars of crystals you buy at Sam's, which you set in a pail and they attract moisture and deposit water in the pail. I think the fan is better. Or you could start a new trend and just wear fuzzy clothes!
Another good trick is to spray your clothes, pillows, etc daily (or a couple of times a day) with Lysol. This really cuts down on the mold. Any leather goods (shoes, belts, purses) need to be sealed up in plastic, air tight as possible. Otherwise they will be a green, rotting mess very soon.
When I lived in PV by the river and was away for the summers, I left everything open so that the air could just circulate. I didn't buy the Martinizing bulbs because they were just fluorescent lights and were expensive. Instead I put an ordinary, low wattage light bulb in the closets and left the doors open. Make sure that the light bulbs are not near any flammable materials. I put mine on the floor. I did buy some of the boxes of humidity absorbing containers, but they got like rocks as soon as they got a little damp. The next year, I put absorbent cat litter in containers around the house, under the beds, under the furniture, etc. Shallow pans worked the best. I had ceiling fans in all of the rooms in the house and left them running 24-7 with all doors left open. If you don't have ceiling fans, buy a few of the small electric fans and put them in your closets and around the house.
Every few weeks I spray inside my wardrobes with Lysol or any other medicated aerosol spray that has a blue cross on it meaning it is medicated. This seems to destroy the mold spores before they can do their damage..at times I stand a fan in front of the wardrobe for about half an hour to circulate fresh air and get rid of the clammy stuff. This combination attack seems to work for me.
You might want to consider taking everything out of the closet for this period - put everything where it can get circulating air
like maybe one of those free-standing clothes racks... or hang stuff in the sun every day for a bit. Good Luck!
So, there you have it. Maybe you can pick up a tidbit of advice from this. My only comments are:
I didn't know that anyone in Puerto Vallarta used (or even OWNED) a vacuum cleaner!
I don't know how wise it would be to leave light bulbs burning 24-7 set on the floor. The way things leak around here, you might return to more than moldy clothes - like burnt-to-a-crisp clothes! Problem solved!
The longer I am here, the more I adapt to the smell. I can barely smell musty or humid-stink any longer. Hmmm, I wonder if that is why when I see friends that return in the fall, they sniff around me with upturned noses and drift away... |
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