Look! Behold! I've got Mold!

Man oh man do I have mold in my apartment! Starting on my first night in my apartment, I noticed that my sheets felt damp when I got into bed. I figured it was mostly my imagination and ignored it, even though every night if felt the same. A few days later, I went to pick up a pill that I'd cut in half a day earlier, and it crumbled between my fingers. (This has now happened several times.) Things like napkins always seem like they're slightly damp. A couple of days ago, I went to put on a pair of basic, flat, all leather sandals that I'd just worn the week before. But now they were covered in mold, inside and out. That was my true wake up call....I obviously had a mold problem that was on the move. I pulled my desk away from the wall, and sure enough, the back side of my desk was covered in fuzzy green, white, gray, and black mold. The inside of an empty drawer had mold growing on it. My address book was covered. The back of any type of furniture (bed headboard, dresser, etc) was covered.

We're in rainy season here...as a matter of fact the rain is smacking the tin roof right now. Rainy season started about mid-late May this year (a little later than usual), and normally lasts thru Oct. Some people say September is the worst for the rain...we'll see. The heat is the worst in late May and June they say...I'm so glad I was in school and not here! We can pretty much count on rain in the late afternoon and/or evening....and almost assuredly during the night. It often rains quite hard, and starts pouring without warning. I've only experienced one set of days where it rained essentially all day and night. So, it's really no surprise that it's also mold season. I've heard other missionaries talk about this prevalent problem. It seems that some places on the HIS campus are worse than others....I seem to have hit a gold mine....or is that a mold mine? Anyhow, I've contacted my long time missionary friends in Ecuador to get their secrets for beating mold and I spent a large chunk of today trying various methods of de-molding my apartment. We'll see which, if any, methods are better. I recently found that I could buy a dehumidifier for about $200, but I don't know how much area it would cover- my whole apartment? And besides, rainy season will be over soon. I hear it's not as bad in "dry" season (which is the other 6 months of the year). We'll see. My Ecuador friends tells me that the mold never gets but so much better in her neck of the woods. In the meanwhile, if any of you have some tried and true methods for beating mold, let me know. I've been told to use bleach...the problem is that I can't use it on the back of furniture (i.e. the fake wood-cardboard backing on my desk).

Oh, one last thing. This blew my mind. My Ecuador friend, told me to try to keep everything off the floor. One night, I threw a pair of white ankle socks toward a chair in the corner of my bedroom. They landed on the floor. I'd only worn them for about an hour, and figured I'd wear them the next day. The next day I went to put them on...and they were literally damp. Wow! Guess she was right....leave nothing on the floor!

OK, I'm going to go now. I dare not sit still too long for fear of growing mold myself.