With the weather being so cold and damp, parts of the house that are north facing and don’t get the little sun we do get during the day just stay cold and damp.
We’ve had to use an electric fan in the bedroom every day to dry the blankets on our bed, we wake up in the morning and feel like the dew from outside has descended on the top of the bed, although from researching online it seems this is normal when you sleep in a room with no heating.
This morning I stripped the bed down and found mold on my pillow, but luckily it’s an Ikea foam pillow with a removable external cover and I was able to wash it in a very strong bleach mix and surprisingly all the mold came out.
The blankets don’t have mold so I just hung them outside to air and dry out. In situations like these it’s important to clean all the furniture, even using bleach on the back of dressers to kill any spores that might be forming unseen.
At the same time I also washed the walls down with a highly concentrated bleach mix, then mopped the floors, and then just to finish everything off I left the bed unmade while the electric fan dries everything out, including the mattress.
Our health is too important to allow mold to develop in an already damp house, and bleach is cheap so using a bottle every few weeks is a small price to pay for peaceful nights and no allergies.
We’ve got mold in our house, and it seems to be taking over in some rooms. you know the white puffy mold and black mold that looks like ant droppings? That’s what we’ve got.
The bathroom was the worst affected because there isn’t enough ventilation or an extractor fan so when we have showers the steam settles on the ceiling and it just stay wet.
The other problem area is the kitchen, but in fact our kitchen and living room is a big open plan room so the problem there is crying walls, we just can’t seem to keep them dry.
The bedroom is another problem, one wall is always cold because it doesn’t get the sun, so we had black mold growing on the wall and furniture that was up against it.
Opening all the doors and windows during the day hasn’t helped much, we just don’t get enough sunshine and the wind feels cold and damp, so all we can do is use a fan to blast air around the areas.
Cleaning mold off walls, ceilings, and other things is painful, I’ve tried everything from the supermarket, and the only thing that seems to work is bleach, straight from the bottle, and not mixed with water.
Recently we’ve had a spate of mosquito attacks to deal with in the house, we never see them, we never hear them, we just know we’ve been bitten multiple times.
Sometimes they bite us while we’re asleep, other times it’s when we have a shower, but for me it’s most often when I’m outdoors watering my patio garden.
Figuring out where the mosquitos come from is a dilemma because we actually don’t have any stagnant water around the house, to the best of our knowledge all of the taps don’t leak, yet they still keep breeding somewhere very close.
In our case the mystery has at last been partially solved. My man saw one emerge from under the washing machine the other day, and sure enough, the washing machine has a wet patch under it, which is of course also dark and cooler than the rest of the house. So now we’re going to have to make sure we regularly lift (yeah right) the washing machine to clean under it.
Despite my hatred of insecticides I think he might be right, it’s going to be much easier to spray under the machine than to lift it.
I know it isn’t really OK to hate animals and by extension insects, but why do Flies have to be so stupid? This morning I was in a great mood, I was minding my own business, and I certainly wasn’t in the way of insects going about their business.
So why then did this one particular fly keep landing on my legs and tickling me, and everytime I shooed it away it would simply land on my computer, or my coffee cup, and then back on me again. It even buzzed my face.
Now any normal person would’ve got the fly spray out and sprayed but I thought I’d be kind and open the window to let it out. That didn’t work, the sudden gust of breeze couldn’t have been enough of a hint for the fly.
Next I tried herding it towards the window using my arms like a shepherd does to get sheep moving. Picture me flapping my arms while a fly continues to buzz around me.
Even after all that it still wouldn’t leave me alone so I had no choice but to get angry. That didn’t help but I felt better except the fly was still landing on my legs. Eventually it settled on the inside of the glass so I though I’d cup my hand around it and encourage it to move towards the opening. It had other ideas in got squished under my palm. Very sad, but at least it wasn’t bothering me anymore. 
Cleaning | Pixabella | 
January 18, 2009 7:26 pm | 
Comments (0) 
