Hat and Rehat
Call Me a Cab
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- Denver
Actually, as someone that deals with mold in construction and remodelling, vinegar kills spores much better than bleach. The chlorine in bleach is great for cleaning up the dark discoloration.) Follow it up with cheap white vinigar to wipe out remaining spores.Mold hates two things, sunlight & draughts. The mold you see are the fruiting bodies of the fungus who's roots (mycelium) have already been breaking down the support for some time before the visable signs appear. Putting moldy objects in the sun will kill off spores & the fruiting bodies, since the UV's are deadly to them but it won't alter any structural damage caused by the fungus. If after washing & drying (don't dry leather in the sun or next to any artificial heat source ) it/they still smell 'moldy' then I'm afraid your boots have been permantly damaged.
To prevent your possessions from getting moldy, reducing humidity is always a good idea but aeration is equally important, if you can get a permanant through-draft where you store them so much the better & putting them out under the sun regularly will help prevent any spores from taking hold. As for hats, it is more likely the leather sweatbands will fall victim to mold rather than the felt it's self (unless sweat stained or damp) so same thing, don't store them piled up in a dark place with no aeration. Also you'll need to scrub down the area you have been storing your stuff in since there is probably a healthy supply of spores just waiting for a nice substrate to colonize... bleach is as good as anything.
Dont mix them together.
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