Moldy

Every person needs to pause once in a while from all the regular work he or she has been doing. With the week long Halloween break for me, I found it rather depressing.

Every working person would get a hard time cleaning up the house or the room especially if you work 6 days a week and on your days off, you catch up on sleep. That has already been a routine for me. Whatever short one or two hour breaks I get, I spend buffering all the other outside noises to enjoy a little personal space. Thus, you could easily picture out my room, our house to be in complete disarray. (Ok, disarray IS an understatement.) 

So today, a Thursday and the official start of my week-long Halloween break (I did mention week-long right?), I took the task of cleaning up my room (partially cleaning, that is). I have been pushing this task a long time only to regret it later.

Of all parts of the room I was meticulous about, I highly try to keep my books as clean and safe as possible. So, I couldn't forget the horror when I tried to take all the books out of my closet shelf (You couldn't imagine where else I have been putting all my books). Half of the books were wet and moldy. Ants apparently loved the place and the shelf was smelling of fresh mold.

In a sudden rush of mad panic, I immediately took out ALL the books from the shelves and started examining each one. A lot were still soaking wet, several started to have white squishy molds, but over all, the books were still salvageable if I can keep them dry.

That put all the cleaning effort to a halt and the salvaging of books to a start. I began perusing the web for potential book cleaning efforts only to find some really helpful but difficult to do ways to salvage moldy books or paper.

Here are some ways from museum SOS:

1. Find what is causing the mold growth. In my case it's a broken downspout. The water found its way behind my bookshelf. It caused the wood to warp and the books got wet as well
2. Modify the environment so that is no longer conducive to mold growth. The repair of the downspout would have to wait though. In the mean time, I tried keeping the closet open to let the air circulate. I also tried to blast the area with cold air.
3. Implement safety precautions for all the people working on moldy items. The page suggested things that are alien for me. I didn't follow it so I'll suffer the repercussions later. Great job, Worthy!!
4. Isolate the affected items. I immediately separated the bad books from the good ones.
5. Begin to dry the materials. The step suggested putting the books in an airconditioned space. Since I can't go to the nearest convenience store or fast food, to aircondition the books, I placed them outside in the sun where there's enough air circulation. (screw the sun though, it's a cloudy day today). Oh! and the guide also suggested putting the books out of humid places, but this is the Philippines for crying out loud. Humidity is best here.
6. If drying is not possible, freeze them. I had the idea of stuffing all the books inside our refrigerator but I knew someone would kill me when I do that.
7. Clean the affected items. Do not try to clean the active mold (soft and fuzzy) yourself. This got me really surprised. I just tried to remove all the molds by hand before reading this article. So good bye cruel world.
8. Dry and thoroughly clean the room where the mold outbreak occurred. Have I mentioned that cleaning the room went into a halt? Well, it's still on halt.
9. Return the materials to the affected area. I said everything went on HALT! Seriously though, I still couldn't return the books back since the closet and the downspout still is broken.
10. Continue to monitor conditions to prevent mold growth. Whatever.

Hope this really help. Just follow the instructions to avoid being like me.