Mold in the Closet

Mold in the Closet and on Your Clothes: Why It Keeps Coming Back

You pull out a jacket you have not worn in a while and it has green-white fuzz on the shoulders. Or the leather shoes on the closet floor have a bloom on them, or there is a dark patch low on the back wall behind the hanging clothes. Questions like "why does mold keep growing on my clothes even after I wash them?" and "is it safe to wear clothes that were in a moldy closet?" draw dozens of answers online, because it happens in a lot of homes, especially humid ones like ours in Fort Bend County.

Why closets are such a common spot

A closet is a small, closed room with almost no airflow, packed with fabric, leather and cardboard, all of which hold moisture. If the air in the house is humid, the air in the closet is usually more so, and it does not get dried out by the AC the way the open rooms do. A few situations make it much worse:

• A closet on an exterior wall. The wall surface is cooler than the room in some weather, so moisture condenses on it, and clothes pressed against it stay damp.
• A closet next to a bathroom or laundry. Shower steam and a slow plumbing drip in the shared wall both feed it.
• The closet that holds the AC air handler or water heater. Condensate lines, drain pans and fittings in these closets can leak or sweat, and the platform the unit sits on is a frequent place for mold to start.
• Items put away damp. Gym bags, a rain jacket, laundry that was not quite dry, or shoes worn in the rain.
• A closet packed tight to the walls, so air never moves behind the clothes.

What to do with your belongings

Take everything out and look at it in good light, outdoors if possible so you are not shaking spores around the house.

• Washable clothing and linens: launder in the warmest water the care label allows and dry fully. Most come through fine, though a stubborn stain may remain.
• Dry-clean-only items: tell the cleaner about the mold rather than putting them back in the closet.
• Leather shoes, bags and belts: surface bloom can often be wiped off with a damp cloth outdoors and the item dried thoroughly, but leather that is heavily covered or smells strongly may not be worth saving.
• Cardboard boxes, paper and anything stored in them: cardboard is a favorite food for mold. Bag it and discard the box; go through the contents separately.

If anyone in the household has allergies, asthma or another health concern, talk to a doctor about handling and wearing items that were exposed. We are a remediation contractor and do not give medical advice.

Why it keeps coming back

If you clean everything and the mold returns within weeks, something in that closet is still wet. Washing clothes treats the symptom; the moisture source is the problem. Check these in order:

• Put an inexpensive hygrometer in the closet for a few days. If it reads well above the rest of the house, humidity is the driver.
• Look at the bottom of the walls and the baseboard, especially on exterior walls and walls shared with a bathroom. Staining, peeling paint or softness points to water in the wall. Our guide to mold vs. water stains helps tell them apart.
• In an AC or water heater closet, look at the drain pan, condensate line and the platform. Rust, water marks or swollen wood mean a leak.

For a humidity-only problem, the usual fixes are leaving the door open or fitting a louvered door, keeping clothes a few inches off exterior walls, not storing anything damp, and keeping household humidity at roughly 50 percent or below. A small dehumidifier in a problem closet can help.

When the closet wall needs remediation

Growth on the painted surface of a dry, firm wall can usually be cleaned. Growth that covers a large patch, comes back after the humidity is under control, or sits on drywall that is stained, swollen or soft has almost certainly gone into the wall. Drywall is porous, and mold growing inside it cannot be wiped away; see black mold on drywall for why. The same applies to a plywood platform under an air handler that has been wet for a long time.

In that situation the closet is contained, the contaminated drywall or wood is removed past the visible edge, the cavity is dried and treated, and the moisture source is fixed before anything is closed back up. The remediation process page walks through how that works.

If you rent

A closet that keeps growing mold is worth reporting even if you have been cleaning it yourself. Take photos of the wall and your belongings with dates, and put the report in writing so there is a record of when it started and what you saw.

Need a second opinion on the wall?

If the closet wall is stained or soft, the mold keeps returning, or it is in the closet with your AC unit, call (816) 371-0136. Ironclad serves Missouri City and the 77459 and 77489 ZIP codes, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a humidity fix or a remediation job. See our mold remediation page for more.