I have all of these books that I can’t bring into the house because of the overpowering smell of mildew. There are lots of magazines (Analog, Amazing, Galaxy and even some Ellery Queen Mysteries). There are over a hundred hard cover books from the 70s and 80s, and a few hundred paperbacks.
I tried the cat litter technique and it didn’t work. This next attempt is to put a container of chlorine bleach in a sealed box of books.
I put a bunch of stinky magazines with the page ends up so that the fumes could get down into the book. I filled a plastic container about 1/4 way with household bleach. The container had holes drilled in the top. The bleach, consisting of Sodium Hypochlorite in weak solution, naturally gives off chlorine gas. If you have a pool you can use the more concentrated chlorine for swimming pools that will be more intense.
I taped the plastic box shut and left it in the back of the truck for a few weeks.
I was a little worried that the chlorine gas would bleach the magazines. It did not. The bleach lost it’s smell after about a week.
This worked better than the cat litter method, which hardly worked at all. The magazines still have a slight mildew smell, but not the overpowering smell that made them hard to read.
I have some commercial mildew remover in the form of Calcium Chloride packets that also give off chlorine gas. I loaded up another box and we’ll see in a week or two how this did.
One Comment
Greetings,
I haven’t tried it yet, so I am not sure, but I believe your cat litter experiment to be flawed. I conjecture that the reason cat litter may work is because of the moisture absorbing properties of the clay in the litter. Mildew breeds in moisture, and cannot survive without it, so if the clay absorbs all trace of moisture, than the mildew should die. I see two things that may have gone wrong in your attempt. First of all putting the paper over the litter is probably like putting them in two separate compartments, and not allowing the absorption process to take place. Next, you may want to check the ingredients of that scoop away type cat litter that it looked like you were using. That is a “high tech” type of litter, and it may not be a simple clay type litter. You may have success if you use a cheap clay type cat litter, and put a raised grill type rack over the litter(something that has some space between the rack and the litter), and then put the books on the rack(fanned out would probably be best). Then seal the whole contraption in an air tight container.
If you try this, I would be interested to know the results.
Good luck, Pablo.