Mould! It sure does feel like it's everywhere at the moment, try as you might to get rid of it.

We had a chat with microbiologist/mycologist Dr Cameron Jones to find out why it's such a persistent problem. Here's how he answered our questions. 

A prime reason people are experiencing problems with mould right now is because it's winter and we're heating our homes up.

When we turn our heaters on, any cold surfaces in the home — especially walls with rising damp issues — form condensation because there's warm air indoors and cold air outside.

Mould expert Heike Neumeister-Kemp discusses favourable surfaces for mould and how to deal with them amid wet weather conditions.

That available moisture content will be used by typical moulds, bacteria and fungi that are found indoors to grow and cause all sorts of unwanted issues.

[Mould also forms indoors] if your home has an unusual amount of water entering it, whether it's from rain, floods or plumbing defects.

It's predominantly found in damp areas where there are plumbing fixtures and fittings. So, laundries and bathrooms are the key places, followed by kitchens.

But whenever your indoor relative humidity is above 60 per cent, you're going to get ideal conditions for water vapour in the air settling out onto porous and semi-porous materials.

If they get damp and wet, they will start growing mould.

Mould produces spores regularly to sustain its own life cycle, and those spores easily become airborne.

When water becomes available, those spores will germinate within 15 to 24 hours.

So even when water-damaged buildings and home contents dry out, the probability of those spores already having been dispersed within the home is really high.

Your home might have no mould problems or just a normal background level, but then if it suddenly takes on high levels of moisture, anything that becomes damp is going to support mould growth.

Good ventilation is more than just about preventing mould.

Leather items, handbags, backpacks, sports bags and camera bags are some of the typical items you'll see mould growing prolifically on and it's because they become damp when they're resting.

And clothing — particularly clothing made with plant-based materials, [like hemp or bamboo] — have so much material for microbes to grow on.

Mould is also often found on wallpaper and timber — and that can include the backs of timber furniture like bookcases, night tables and tallboys because they're really porous compared to hardwood, which means they take on moisture more easily.

Even if you clean the surface level of something like a timber item of furniture, in many cases that timber is a composite timber that has been compressed using glues and small timber fragments.

The mould could have used the glue as a food source and penetrated the more porous wood fibres, which may make simple surface cleaning ineffective.

So, you can assume after cleaning a household item that the mould spores will be minimised.

But whether you will have cleaned the mould from a household item enough will have depended on the surface roughness.

The rougher the surface, the harder it is to entirely remove spores which may lay dormant only to regrow later and cross-contaminate into other areas in the home or onto other surfaces.

Once you can see mould, you know there's a moisture problem indoors.

It might be solvable with improving ventilation naturally by opening windows and doors, but you may need to resort to mechanical dehumidification because some properties tend to accumulate moisture because the materials that were used to construct the home are such that air can't really circulate well.

So, [in those cases] your only solution is to run a dehumidifier or your heating system essentially all the time to minimise the probability of condensation forming.

If you have wall-mounted inverters, some have a dehumidification setting.

[You could also] consider purchasing desiccant pots which extract moisture from cupboards where shoes and handbags might be stored.

For further advice on removing mould from your home and specifically household goods — as well as how to know when to dispose of mouldy items — follow the link to this article.

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