The same moisture that leads to all of the green lushness and beautiful, undulating, moss-covered rocks here is also responsible for the unique growth that happens inside our houses, on our cars, and within any unfinished wood surface.
You know you live in the Pacific Northwest when…
You experience your worst winter of mold this year because you’ve foregone burning wood and running the heater over 62°, and instead worn your knee-length down jacket inside. It was supposed to be a good financial move. You’re now “paying” for it by having to be on mold patrol every other week. The moment you rest on your laurels, it appears with a vengeance. Note to self: burn the wood next winter and dry out that house.
Said jacket has now become such an extension of your body that you no longer wear anything but black pants and a cozy flannel underneath it. The idea of dressing up or wearing something flattering no longer enters your mind. It would be wet, dirty, or overall unrealistic the minute you walked out on the dirt (mud) driveway on your dirt (mud) road.
You’ve contemplated reflooring your house for years for fear that the perpetual smell of winter and spring mold in the kids’ partly subterranean bedroom might permanently mess with their systems, despite the fact that you clean under their beds, in their drawers, and run an air filter and dehumidifier in their room during the day. Finally deciding on new, mold-free flooring is now the biggest single line item in your house expenses since you moved to the island.
The insistent mold on the bed frame feet and the funky smell of the carpet when I get down low really bothers me
You hug your children before school and notice the hint o’ mold scent on your younger one’s clean shirt. His drawers are the ones that never quite smell right once summer’s sun has passed.
This beautiful handmade chest of drawers by my husband’s father has all unfinished wood inside – you can’t see the mold but you can smell it
The mold in your room has slowly yet aggressively spread to every unfinished wood surface that was once brand new when you moved in. Sometimes you can’t even see it unless you go above and look downward – then a light white cast appears. See it?
Dusting and cleaning took a backseat while I was laid up with back issues – now I’m paying the price!
On other surfaces, it’s not so subtle. It’s demanding to take over a corner of the bedroom.
Even all the slick plastic surfaces are game.
Its made its strongest appearance on cold walls that abut the attic. In a moment of sanity-preserving denial, you withdraw to marvel at the myriad colors and patterns unlike any mold you’ve ever seen. (I wish I had photos of it before it was annihilated. Perhaps it’s better that I don’t.)
You thank the Lord for your husband, the prince who rides in on his pure white horse named Clorox and declares he will fight that mold for you to the death. And every time it resurrects, too.
You acknowledge that there are some things Clorox can’t save. Your lampshades now have light orange circles ingrained in them from the moisture.
And the cherished pictures inside frames hanging on the walls have mattes now dotted with minute black splotches that don’t exactly enhance the art.
Now and then you notice a nook or cranny or item you overlooked in the frequent demolding process.
It doesn’t help that I wear glasses now – when not wearing them, I don’t even really see this from afar
You sprint to the bathroom when you hear a child showering without remembering to turn on the moisture-sucking fan. It’s a losing battle, though, as there are no windows or doors leading to outside air in there. No matter how many times your husband has bleached or tea tree-ed those ceilings and walls, the mold just forms again in all the same places.
This was demolded just two weeks ago and has returned with a fury
Your bathroom towels never dry. You smell the permanently not-so-Tide scent that returns a few days after they’ve been washed and feel thankful it’s COVID times and no one’s visiting anytime soon. You contemplate buying all new towels someday when people can again come in or stay over.
You realize that the end of your wooden spoon that sat in the dish drainer too long is blackish. You clean it vigorously and decide it’s fine to keep using – it’s the handle side, not the soup side.
You hug your husband who has come in from a few hours of paying (flooring) bills in his office and his shirt has absorbed the unique aroma that happens to be invisibly occupying that room. It’s like wine – spend some time smelling it and you’ll start to learn the subtle intricacies of each different region.
You begin to accept that the farther you get into winter, the worse your car will look. You let it go. Washing it in your mud driveway in cold, wet weather will just freeze you and produce more mud beneath you. Going to the car wash will be a quick fix that only lasts a day or two, so you set the idea aside entirely.
By February, your car looks terrible and it actually gets you dirty when you get out of it.
There is moss growing in the outside cracks of the car windows and between the letters of the make and model. It’s so very Northwest but it bothers you – the implication that you haven’t cleaned your car in that long, when you’d prefer being on the more meticulous end of the spectrum. But by this point, you also have less natural motivation – you’ve just spent five or six months under a blanket of dark clouds and Vitamin D is foreign to your body.
March has come and the sun has peeked through the clouds and into your living room for a solid 20 minutes! You’ve pulled your desk chair up to the windows – I mean right against the windows – to sit in the light while you work on your computer. It’s still too cold to sit outside, but it sure is balmy inside for those fleeting moments before a cloud comes and takes it all away again.
A few days of that and Vitamin D is now being produced in your system again in a way that surpasses the synthetic version you have in your drawer. A metabolic, seasonal shift happens within you. There is an immediate desire to do everything you didn’t care to do a week ago. You pull on your boots; switch out of your long robe of a jacket and into your shorter, rattier one; and bring the kids out to the driveway with you and a bucket of rags, toothbrushes, and hot, soapy water – it’s annual car-washing day!
Two hours later, you realize the car you’ve been driving all along doesn’t actually look like a beater. It’s quite nice now that its island camouflage has been scrubbed away. Wow. You think, “Why haven’t I been washing the car every month?” Then you remember the aforementioned futility of doing so and move on, happy to begin spring on a clean note.
May you know you aren’t alone in the winter mold battle, and may you enjoy all of the verdant, drippity lushness outside right now on this cold, rainy, yet bird-chirpy first day of spring…
The moss-covered, Cotswold-like pathways…
The island’s signature green-carpeted roads…
The cyclamen peaking out of rock crevices…
The beautiful growth clothing the trees…
The succulents thriving in their padded beds…
And the droplet-covered buds bursting into flowers along pathways…
And don’t worry…by the time we can invite you over to enjoy life together, all the mold will be gone.
Happy spring!
Disclaimer: You’ve just seen the worst parts of our house, close up, before being ameliorated. It’s actually a clean, wonderful little home to be in. 🙂
Hi Edee
Blog stalker from Bellingham and fellow lover of Orcas Island
One thing I noticed is it looks like your windows are aluminum. Theyre terrible for moisture. Vinyl is a much better choice. The aluminum actually shrink and expand with our swings in temperature. Lots of benefits to Vinyl. We have been replacing all our old aluminum windows with vinyl and having far less moisture and mold in our house.
Another reccomendation is getting a dehumidifier to keep your moisture at a healthy level but ya too the wood stove will dry your house out so you may not need it after all.
Love your posts especially the wonderful photography.