After weeks of very humid weather we finally have some respite. We have a hygrometer which sits on the bench between the kitchen and dining room and when I got up this morning it was 47% relative humidity – that is about half what it has been recently. During the course of the day it fell even more to 33% at one stage.
This may not seem particularly exciting to those of you you are not living in humid, high rainfall areas but believe me, it is exciting when your lounge chairs look like this.
The back looked worse – if that is possible.
They have been getting worse over about a week or two but it was no point in cleaning them while the weather was so wet. In fact The Duke could not work out how it go so wet the other night – the rain does not blow in – until I pointed out that both of the chairs were completely wet simply due to the humid conditions.
Today I cleaned both recliner chairs and the 2 seater sofa. I have a small jar with about 100ml of olive oil and some lemon essential oil. The lemon oil is because I like the aroma and also it is supposed to be a spider deterrent. I am not sure how effective that is. I added 5ml of clove oil to the mix and then with an old t-shirt wiped, rubbed and polished for a couple of hours until I had all of the leather cleaned, free of mould and gleaming.
Here are the ‘after’ photos.
And the back.
I also keep a spray bottle with 5ml of clove oil diluted in 500ml of water. Using this and a clean cloth I also cleaned all of the kitchen cupboards and kickboards as well as quite a few of the door frames and skirting boards. Keeping the mould at bay is a never-ending battle in this climate so I make the clove oil a regular part of my cleaning routine.
If you are interested in more information about reducing the humidity in your home as well as the use of clove oil you can type ‘mould’ into the search button on the right-hand side of the blog and you will find all of my other posts that deal with this issue.
Finally, if you are concerned about humidity in your home I would strongly recommend purchasing a hygrometer. It is a real eye-opener to actually know what the humidity reading is.
organised castle 
Fairy, that is absolutely amazing. Not experiencing such humidity here I had no idea.
Thanks, Poppet. That is the great thing about blogging – we can share all sorts of issues (good and bad) of which we have no personal experience.
Yep – we’ve got that problem at our place too! Legs of the kitchen table & chairs are the worst…
Are the table and chairs wooden? We also get it on any wooden furniture as it is porous. Generally not too bad and I keep it at bay with the clove oil polish mentioned in the post. Did you end up getting a dehumidifier?
Mmmmm it’s a problem I’d never considered, living in Tasmania.
Deb – where in Tasmania are you? I expect mould could be an issue in the high rainfall areas of the south-west.
We used to put moisture absorting containers in our wardrobes in Kempsey to help stop the clothes going mouldy. It was amazing how much water collected in the bottom of those pots. Just thought I would add that the humidity here this morning must be around 90% again!
It is amazing how much moisture can be drawn out of the atmosphere. It gives a new appreciation to how damp things can get. We use the small dehumidifying ‘eggs’ in all of the wardrobes. I want to get another one for the linen cupboard.
The other way to reduce the incidence of mould on clothing is to reduce the amount of clothes in the wardrobe. If there is more space to allow the air to circulate the mould is less likely to form.
I am astounded by the dehumidifier – it can collect about 8 litres of water from one room in about 10 hours.