Contents

Okay, so one more post and then hopefully I have gotten it all out … for a while 😊  

The infamous house with the impossible attic and leaky basement.  We used to think it was cute and had character ... now we just think it was painted yellow because it's a lemon 😁😭

The biggest thing we’ve been working on these past weeks is how to sell our house… spend the money to get rid of mold and hopefully recoup that, or give full disclosure and take the hit on sale price.  While trying to work through that, we’ve also been wrestling with the whole contents issue and the difference of opinions on whether your contents are effected or how effected they are.  The Dutchness in us balks at getting rid of so much stuff, but the desire for full health keeps the tug-a-war going.  We want to do what’s best, but when it comes to physically having to throw things out we struggle with whether we are doing so unnecessarily since there as such differences of opinions.  But, if we take the stuff with and health issues don’t resolve will we constantly wonder whether we’re still being exposed … or whether it is simply something else causing the problems.  Way too confusing 😒

We have sort of come to a conclusion.  Due to the reality that there is a high amount of environmental mold in our current area, we feel it would be less of a problem to take our stuff with and are thinking we will take the approach “wash everything and get rid of what you cannot thoroughly wash”.  We realize that each home has different molds, we seen this on four other tests.  But the tests also showed they all had lots of mold, and it seems that the second we open our windows or go to someone else’s house, we are likely to pick up these mold spores.  While we haven’t made full decisions yet, we are thinking along the lines of getting rid of (or putting into storage) the worsts items that are known to carry spores or spores are too deep for cleaning.  This would be anything upholstered or anything cloth that is not washable or more than ½” thick – so things like boots, coats, sleeping bags, comforters, couches, mattresses.  And then there is paper, – yes, all of our books (and we have many of them).  Documents can be photocopies or scanned, but for the rest most paper has to go or needs to be kept outside of the house in a contained area.  We also plan to make the bedrooms “safe” areas.  We spend 8-10 hours sleeping and breathing in our bedrooms, so this should be the cleanest area of the house.  This will mean metal beds, metal cupboards/armours, no books in rooms and no clutter so air can move well.   All other items we would be washed with borax or Dawn dish soap before being brought to a new home in order to reduce the amount of spores we would take with.  This precaution is especially because our house has high amounts of Stachybotrys, which is one of the most toxic black molds and was not found so much in most of the other houses we tested.

Unfortunately, we’re not really sure if we will be staying in the area.  We are strongly considering relocating to Alberta, but find it a bit rash to pick up and do that without knowing for sure if the mold and air quality is actually a problem. At the same time we really think it would be pointless to go through treatment only to return to the toxic house.  What if the kids are now hyper-sensitive to mold (which they likely will be if that’s what’s bothering them), then does it make sense to come back to an area you know has higher levels of mold?  Rob is quite willing to go and has been ever since we did our road trip in 2016 and my allergies went away.  Two of the kids are okay with the idea, one is not so happy with the idea.  If it were just Rob and I it wouldn’t be a hard decision, but when dealing with kids and the adjustments and emotions that come with moving during your teenage years it’s a bit harder to decide what to do.  This decision really can’t be made until we’ve been on our mold sabbatical and seen if that makes any difference.   If we were only going on a mold sabbatical and then coming back it would probably be a bit easier to process all this, but since from there we are going to Edmonton for the summer it makes it a bit harder to figure out what to do and be prepared for September when it’s time for the kids to return to school.

I am really hoping to have our house packed up before we leave in June so it’s not left for Rob to figure out while we’re in Edmonton.  But should we decide to live in Alberta, I need to pack it different then if we stay here.  We have read good reports about mold levels in Alberta, so if we were to go there it would NOT be wise to take along our stuff and bring along all our lovely mold spores and toxins.  If we go to Alberta we would only take items that are could be safely cleaned.  This would be non-porous items such as metal, glass, ceramic and porcelain items … still debating on things like washable clothing and electronics.  We’ll definitely cut down on moving costs this way ;)

We haven’t quite worked out the logistics of this yet, for now we’re thinking two storage bins/trailers – one for Alberta safe items and one for Ontario items, that can later be sold if we decide not to stay.  Or maybe we’re better off just unloading it right away and saving the storage cost considering we don’t exactly own anything all that expensive … these are all things we have to figure out.  For the time being we have to figure out what’s going on with our house – fix or sell as is -  and then we can determine the next step. 

As an additional note, before I end off, we have moved back to our home.  This was a difficult decision to make and we’re not really confident we made the right decision but it was somewhat of a logistical decision.  My parents’ house was one of the homes that was ERMI tested and failed.    We debated returning home when we first got the test results, but decided to stay there because our home was higher for a couple of the more toxic molds, especially stachybotrys.  We also felt that if there was going to be work going on in the house we’d have to move out again anyways, so we might as well stay at my parents.  But as time kept going and things were moving rather slowly, Rob and I found it hard to get anything done with regards to the house if we were never there.  I would get short little spurts at the house every few days, but wouldn’t get a huge amount accomplished and was often just trying to get internet related stuff done  since we did not have WIFI at my parents but only data.   The girls had not seen any improvement in their health, but we did see some improvement in Matthew during the last days before we left (which made me doubt our decision again).  We had the kids do a test run to see how they reacted to being back in the house after being away for three weeks and we did not notice any immediate or obvious symptoms.  Rob sealed up all the fixtures and attic hole to keep attic air out of the house and we purchased an Air Purifier to help reduce the mold spores and bacteria.  With spring around the corner we hope to soon be able to have the windows open regularly.  “What?” you say, “and let all the outside spore in?”  There’s no avoiding that, and outside air is better than our inside air, since stachybotrys is only found in water damaged buildings.

And so now I better get off my computer and use this time that I have at home to get some productive things done here 😀  Please continue to pray for us as we try to work our way through the decision that need to be made in the next weeks.