Can furniture and belongings be saved from mold?

Hard, non-porous items usually can. Glass, metal, ceramics, hard plastic, and sealed or finished wood furniture can be HEPA-vacuumed, damp-wiped, and dried completely. The finish on good furniture keeps growth on the surface, where it can be removed.

Unfinished wood, wicker, and particleboard are harder. Light surface growth can sometimes be cleaned, but swollen particleboard or growth that has soaked into raw wood usually means the piece goes.

Usually, if they have visible growth. Mattresses, upholstered furniture, and cushions are porous, so growth gets into the padding where cleaning can't reach. As the EPA puts it, "Absorbent or porous materials, such as ceiling tiles and carpet, may have to be thrown away if they become moldy." Anything porous that sewage or floodwater soaked should be discarded rather than cleaned.

A piece that sat in a moldy room without growth on it is a different case. It may only need a thorough HEPA vacuuming and cleaning. If anyone in the home has asthma, allergies, or a weakened immune system, ask their doctor before keeping porous items from a moldy space.

Often, yes. Washable clothes and linens with light growth or a musty smell can usually be laundered, using the warmest water the fabric allows, and dried completely before they go back in a closet. Vinegar and other laundry additives can help with odor, but a full wash and a full dry do the work.

Leather, suede, and dry-clean-only items are harder. Take valuable pieces to a professional cleaner. Then fix the closet: in Florida, clothes grow mold when a closet on an exterior wall stays humid, so the humidity is the real problem.

Paper is porous and hard to save once growth sets in. Ordinary paperwork and paperback books with growth are usually discarded. Irreplaceable documents and photographs are worth taking to a document restoration specialist; wet documents are often stabilized by freezing until they can be professionally dried.

Photograph and list what you discard before it goes, especially if you plan to file an insurance claim.

Often, if they're in the way. Moving contents out lets the structure be contained, remediated, or dried properly, and keeps belongings from sitting in a work area. It's called a contents pack-out: items are photographed, inventoried, packed, moved on site or off site, cleaned where they can be, and brought back when the work is done.

Clean items before they go into a clean space, so you aren't carrying spores and dust from one room to the next.

Sort into three piles: hard items to clean, porous items with growth to discard, and irreplaceable items for a specialist. Photograph and list everything you throw away. Fix the moisture before anything goes back, or it will grow again.

Sterling's contents pack-out photographs, inventories, packs, and relocates belongings during water and mold jobs, cleans what can be cleaned, and brings it back afterward. Every job starts with a free on-site estimate and a written, itemized quote.