Mold Follow-Up

The mold in the bedroom is drying out but the room still stinks and I think our mattress may be to blame. The Studly Hubby found a recipe for a bleach-dish-soap concoction you're supposed to use on the mattress and walls so he donned his heavy-duty cleaning outfit (underwear), pumped up with some energy food (donuts), and marched into the bedroom looking determined. I haven't seen him in twenty minutes so I think things are going well. I'm a lucky girl to be so allergic to dust and mold - not only do I have a get-out-of-cleaning-free card but nobody ever makes me feel guilty about it (especially if they've seen me in the throes of an allergy attack).

I spent a good part of the afternoon today trying to figure out what my rights are as a tenant in dealing with this situation. The rules are murky and the agencies that are set up to help with these cases are hard to find and difficult to contact, and once you do they aren't even very helpful. Taking legal action starts with writing a formal letter so I wrote one and sent it off today ('dear landlord, we have mold, you need to take care of it, etc etc'). If they don't do anything within ten days we can start getting aggressive. I think we can fix it ourselves and take the money out of rent, but it has to be a necessary fix (is a moldy carpet necessary to fix? how about when you aren't sure it's moldy, can you still fix it?). Also we can call and request an official home inspection by the city where they check for obvious leaks and would probably throw a fit if they found mold in the carpet, but they may also throw fits about other things like our grill that is bike locked to the back fence and sits right under the upstairs deck. It'll be an interesting process. Meanwhile our landlord contacted us and made promises about getting a contractor out etc etc but I'm feeling skeptical since the refrigerator fiasco.

The Studly Hubby has emerged from the bedroom and the whole apartment now smells like bleach. Ah, sweet revenge. You better give up, you nasty mold.