The Mold Attacks!

Last night I found that there was mold covering almost everything in our basement.  We have not only storage down there, but we've put a play room down there with almost every single toy we own for Ingrid!  So I had to get some bleach water and rags and scrub down what I could.  Unfortunately about half the toys had to go. 

I was sad about the talking Lola doll.  She had black all over her poor face and I couldn't wash her because she's got batteries.  Into the trash...along with a few other stuffed things that were beyond washing.  Her kitchen got a nice scrubbing but still smells pretty bad so I think we may have to get rid of that too.  Half her fake food went into the garbage, and some books were pretty nasty, too. 

After a couple hours of scrubbing and probably inhaling more bleach and mold spores than is healthy for a pregnant woman, I had all the toys out of the basement and put away upstairs.  The good thing is that Ingrid hasn't played with these toys for some time, as we've spent so much time outside in the sun.  So bringing up the toys that would stay was like getting all new toys to her!  She has kept busy all morning.  And it's nice that I cleaned something in this house and got to reorganize things that had been slipping into disaster zone. 

Unfortunately some of our belongings were hit, too.  We had to throw out the baby backpack, which was broken anyway, so not too huge of a deal.  A sleeping bag sack is disgusting but hopefully the expensive sleeping bag is unharmed.  Our backpacks luckily were not in harm's way, and all the baby stuff we have accumulated was thankfully in plastic bins and is okay.  When we were in Milwaukee last week we saw the devastation of everyone's basements flooding, so I felt lucky that we could at least salvage half of what we had down there.  And I'm feeling lucky that none of my sewing stuff was harmed!!  That really would have killed me!

So now another day of reorganizing and downsizing and we have a clean living room with a new sewing nook, and Ingrid has a new room with all her toys stashed away nicely.  It was nice to have a playroom but it will be nice to let her play in her room, too.  As long as she still has a place to store her toys without me having to step on them every two seconds, I'm okay!