More about mold

I'm starting to get freaked out. Now that I'm pulling things away from the walls and looking down at the trim, I see it everywhere. The spots in the corners are worse than I realized. The mold along the trim is hard to see, but it's clearly in the early stages. I'm completely grossed out. I don't want anything to touch the walls or the floor. I made the mistake of looking up black mold on the internet. There isn't a lot of good information out there (other than how to treat your house for it, which isn't what I'm interested in) and there are a lot of alarmist sites - including a documentary trailer on youtube. I'm nervous we're going to be sick for a long time.

Today our plan is this: at 11 the landlords' cleaning lady is coming over. I will not let her touch the mold unless she brings sheets/tarps/etc to cover our belongings. She also needs to take the curtains away to wash. I don't want to stir up the spores and spread it further - mainly into our things anymore than it probably is. After that, we are walking around the entire town looking for 'to let' signs, and just generally getting out into the sunshine and fresh air on this beautiful clear day. We're seeing a house at 6.30 this evening.

I do have some pictures of the mold, but I'm too afraid to post them. I don't want people freaking out - I'm freaked out enough as it is. Until we have another place to live, we can't leave. We can't afford to move into a hotel. We do know the manager of one of the hotels. Do you think he'd let us move in for free? I may ask. Am I being alarmist?

(no subject)

A big part of the mold problem is our fault. I feel like a really awful tenant. I grew up in a place wetter than here, but all the housing is timber framed so the houses 'breathe,' whereas here it's all concrete, brick and plastic windows. We've been drying our laundry all around the house, not opening the windows enough, or heating the house consistently enough. We're beginning a program to change the way do things, air it all out, and dry things up. And clean up the mold. I am NOT looking forward to that. But it must be done. Then, we need to take all our bedding to the laundromat. Hopefully in a week's time or so we'll begin to feel better. Adam and I feel terrible.

We're still going to look at other places though. We think we may be paying too much.