Our Mold Story

“Let’s do it,” we agreed spontaneously and then texted our relator.

Selling a home is rarely a “spontaneous” decision, but after 12 months of back and forth about how we could pay off an enormous amount of business debt with home equity, we decided to sell our beloved first home.

Our heart and soul were diffused into the walls of our wee half duplex that we brought our first baby home from the hospital in. But financial bondage was eating away at our souls and it wasn’t worth it anymore.

We discovered that selling and buying would eradicate our debts completely, and we could even buy a detached home. It seemed like a win-win, no brainer to us!

We had friends trying to sell their home and it had been on the market a long time. We had low expectations, but 20 minutes after the listing was up we had multiple cars drive slowly by our house. By the end of day one we had four offers. We were floored.

Before our house sold, we had looked at this gorgeous 100+ year old home with so much character, an incredible yard, nestled in the heart of our city which we loved very much. We put a conditional offer on selling ours, and it was rejected.

But a week after we accepted an offer on ours, the seller of the character home chose to go with our backup offer! We had a home!

Moving is never easy, but I’d take the move from house 1 to house 2 over the past 5 months of chaos ANY day.

You see, this cute little character home was fun for the enneagram 4 in us, but as a family who prioritizes health at the top, the thrill of an artsy neighbourhood didn’t last long.

We knew there were some air quality issues in the home, but had budgeted our house sale funds to resolve any mold we suspected in the basement. Little did we know what we were getting into.

It turns out this house was infested with threats to our health. Between mold, asbestos, bacteria, a century of animal dander, and fiber-glass in HVAC, it wasn’t long before we all got sick. Respiratory infections were bi-weekly for our entire 4 months there. Existing skin tendencies were exacerbated in all three of us. Mental health tanked, migraines set in, nosebleeds began, sleep disturbed, to scratch the surface.

In my line of work, I am no stranger to air quality, but I was not as educated as I am now. I had concerns and kept bringing them forward, but I didn’t have the right information or concrete evidence to really do anything.

We spent tens of thousands of dollars on remediation, renovation, and managing our health in a toxic environment. We had multiple people inspect our home and find “no water damage,” essentially telling us it was in our heads.

But when mold began growing on our comforter after 1 wash (we had this duvet for 4 years and I washed it 1-3x per month, and never saw this before) it was enough evidence to put two and two together. There were mold spores and mycotoxins circulating through our air and that was why we were struggling. It was our AHA moment that pushed us over the edge…. that convinced us that the money we’ve spent on trying to fix had not fixed the problem, because the problem was not localized, but everywhere.

We slept there two more nights, until the incessant itching, rashes down my legs, bright red cheeked toddler saying “my face is itchy” and watching him wheeze every night, had to come to an end. Once we put it all together, we didn’t want to be there a moment longer. We were done.

We didn’t know where to go, but it was supper time and we just left.

Friends we had asked for prayer offered to pay for a hotel for us. Hotels can be moldy too, so I chose carefully, and we went there. We ended up using the breadcrumbs of what we had financially to stay there two more nights and figure out where we were going next.

A couple from our church who I knew had gone through this before (a decade in a home before realizing mold was affecting the woman’s health to the point of bed-riddenness) and she asked around for somewhere for us to stay.

We searched the rental market, which was bleak, and really we couldn’t afford to stay anywhere while paying for our mortgage and now being back in debt from our many efforts of resolve.

After no success, this generous couple offered for us to stay in their trailer. I’d heard that trailers are often moldy, but it was winter-time, and she was very mold-aware. She assured me there was no mold in the trailer, and with that as our only option, we packed up two little bags and headed there.

There was no water, no functional fridge, and only one bed for our family of 3+1 (also a pull out couch.) But we were grateful to breathe clean air.

Hyper aware, we stripped everything at the door, bought a few new clothes, mold killing spray, and did our best not to track mold into their space.

We figured we could list our house that week, it would sell, and we’d buy a new one - maybe be in the trailer for a month or so….

Well, a month turned into 4, and after a tumultuous time, we JUST got possession of our new home, weeks before expecting our second son.

The past four months have been challenging, lonely, exhausting, and full of grief, confusion and anger. But we made it.

We moved stuff to and from storage eight times, tossed a lot, sold some items that we would not feel comfortable keeping that others don’t (yet) care about. At one point, we even moved into a rental for 48 hours that was moldy, and fled back to the trailer.

We lost a lot. Furniture, stuffies, clothes, beds, linens, toys, books. We salvaged what we could. Anything kept was deeply sanitized with EC3 (more on this in the podcast series) and it has been a ton of work that we have largely done alone, while pregnant, running a business, parenting a toddler, and in our first year of vocational church ministry.

We are changed, slightly scarred, rebuilding from scratch, and better for it. We are now “mold hounds” and can detect a moldy environment quite easily based on symptoms.

The house that killed all my plants no matter how I loved them will forever trigger painful memories, but it marked the start of a new passion to help people with this niche topic.

I’ve now spoken with many mold experts, and prepared a four-part mini series on mold for the Roots & Fruits Podcast so I can do my part to help educate the online community of people on this important and under-highlighted topic.

I am hopeful that the conversations had in this space will educate and empower you to address this serious problem in your own lives.

This phenomenon is making people SICK and few people are talking about it. While no one seems to dispute that visible black mold infestations can be harmful to human health, few look further than that.

My goal is to equip people to realize they may have a mold problem, inspire them to make changes, and educate them holistically so less money is wasted on inaccurate tests and band-aid approach remediations.

I am grateful to be sitting in a new leather recliner (we bought all new furniture, largely leather, plastic or metal unlike the boho-wicker look I used to implement in all my spaces) and am coming down from an intense season that will be etched into my story and who we are as a family.

I have more I want to say, but I’ve got a house to set-up and a baby to have!!!

Shalom, my friends!

-josee