Water Dispenser Mold

It is surprising to me that lurking just out of sight on my somewhat clean refrigerator was something so disgusting. I swear the first 15 minutes, I ran around going “Ewww! Ewww! Ewww!” I thought of all the times that I drank water from there and just about had a fit.

This was a shock! This picture was taken even after furiously scrubbing the area with a Clorox wipe, which did nothing. Once I caught my breath and calmed down, I decided there might be other unsuspecting water dispenser owners with the same problem. I searched the internet and found at least one other person who had this problem and their picture looked just like mine.

The tutorial that I followed recommended spraying everything down with this spray. I ordered it from Amazon but could not wait the two days to deal with the mold. I will say that the bottle says that this kills mold spores but not mold. It also says that you can spray it on fabrics, as well as, hard surfaces then wait to use until dry. It says it is safe and non toxic

You can use vinegar, cleaning vinegar or Hydrogen Peroxide to also clean away mold. I used hydrogen Peroxide because I had it on hand.

You find cleaning vinegar in the cleaning section, if you ever want to try it.

I used a soda cap as my hydrogen Peroxide container and dipped a toothbrush in it.

I also used a q-tip to get in some of the grooves. Oh, it is so gross... it is hard to be this transparent on here but I want to let people who might have this problem to know it happens to the best of us.

The toothbrush worked well.

I feel like it did a good job. I still need to dump out the ice and spray down the inside. Anyone have any tips? Update: After I saw this picture blown up on my computer, I decided the area could be cleaner so I used the EC Mold Spray and saturated the area. I put a sign on it for no one to use it until it was dry. I can only hope that it is clean and sanitary. I know that I am giving myself an A for effort on this particular item.

Now I can enjoy my coffee but you bet your bottom dollar, I will be peeking up there a whole lot more often now.

We'll call this a bonus idea... The first time I saw this I called my husband and declared, "Walmart is selling their trash in the hardware department! Oh Wait... it is a really good deal. I'm buying some. Nevermind." I don't know if other Walmart stores do this, but my Walmart sells their empty bakery pails in the hardware section for $1 including the lid. There are usually more than one size, as well as, 5 gallons pails in round and rectangle shapes. And because most of these are used to hold frosting, they are food safe buckets. If you have ever priced food safe buckets, they are crazy expensive and you have to buy the lid separately. I use them to hold chicken feed, duck feed, wild bird seed... In non food related ways, I also use them to organize my garage and obviously as cleaning buckets, too. (P.S. I do not use the cleaning buckets for the storing the animal food.)

I try to group like products and tools together so I can just grab a bucket and take it with me to do a project. It helps keep things more organized because everything stays in the bucket and goes back on the shelf. I also use small cardboard cups as organizing dividers in the buckets. So, I have a gardening bucket, a wall repair bucket with sparkle, wall patch pieces, putty knifes...you get the idea... a glue and adhesives bucket, a fence repair bucket, a most used tools bucket... In my opinion, you can never have too many buckets and when not being used they stack away easily for storage. And my 5 gallon round gardening bucket, not only is great at keeping the gardening tools together, with the lid on, it is a handy place to sit and contemplate my next step.

Here is what it looks like when my Walmart has them for sale in the hardware section. Around Mother’s Day and graduation will have a really nice assortment of these pails.