Mold loves water, so you can imagine what areas of your home are the most at risk for mold growth. These areas will typically end up being your kitchen, bathroom, and your laundry room, since these rooms stay moist and wet most of the time, especially if you have a large family. Water damage is one of the most common causes of mold growth and almost always occurs on a large scale after a property has been flooded by mother nature. There are a lot of things that you can do in your home that cause mold, however, and they are completely preventable.

You are probably familiar with mildew, since that it what most people refer to what appears in their bathrooms or on wet rags that have been allowed to stay on the counter or in the sink for too long. Well, mildew is just about the same thing as mold, but a mold infestation tends to be more visible and mildew (especially on wet kitchen rags) is less visible, but tends to be slimy.

Letting the bathtub, dishwasher, or clothes washer overflow is also a pretty bad idea, so you want to make sure all appliances in your home that use water are in good repair. Think about the trouble you could save if you just get a new clothes washer or dishwasher? That is, if you can afford it. If not, the best thing to do is just save up for a new one as you can and clean up spills immediately after they occur. These incidents can do a lot more damage to your floor over time than you think, especially if they make it all the way to the carpet in another room. The bad thing about carpet is not so much that the carpet cannot be cleaned and dried, but that once the padding underneath gets molded, there is not anything that you can do to save it. It just has to be torn up and replaced, since it will just shred if you try to clean it.

You should also keep an eye on the plumbing in your kitchen under the sink. The plumbing under here can rupture or leak just like anywhere else in the house, so try to make sure there are no leaks in this area. The best thing for your kitchen is to have a hard surface for flooring, such as tile or stone, but never carpet or hardwood.