More information about your situation might be useful here. My first suggestion is to see if you can find someone local to help you with it (friends, family), but that seems like an obvious enough solution that I expect that if it were that simple you’d have done it already. So, what resources do you have available?
Yea. With migraines like that it is unreasonable to expect that you should be able to do anything like this on your own. Please get help before you get sick from the unsanitary conditions.
I will try. I really did think there was some simple answer that I was missing that would enable me to do it on my own, like everyone does, but i wasn’t accounting for the fact that the people who manage to stay on top of their laundry dont have disabling migraines.
I have a mother who lives very far away, who would spend money she didnt have to come help me if she knew, but I’d feel very guilty about the whole thing.
My best friend is currently at a summer camp like training thing for a new job and following that is moving to Budapest (2 hour train ride away) with her boyfriend (my other friend). So they’re very busy right now and currently unavailable, and they’ve helped me out so much with other things in the past, that I dont want to be a burden on them. I’m ashamed of the condition of the apartment, but I know they would be understanding.
i have a religious community, but the last time i was very sick, in 2009, (3 weeks of influenza + 3 weeks of strep throat), I asked for help getting to a doctor (I had a high fever, was sleeping 22 hours a day, could not keep even a small sip of water down, and was terrified that i was going to die of dehydration). They helped me get to a doctor and get antibiotics and medicine to help me keep things down, but while they were here, they took one look at my flat (a mess. i was too busy throwing up to keep things tidy) and wrote my mother a letter saying that i was clearly mentally ill because of disarray I was living in which reflects an inner disarray of mind and emotion and my mother was so worried that she flew out to see me (which she could not afford to do), but by the time she got here I had mostly recovered and I made an effort to show her that I was okay, not having a nervous breakdown, was a little weak after a physical illness which had led to the mess that had been there (all tidied up in a frenzy that i wasn’t really well enough to do before my mother arrived), and that i did not need to be taken back to live with her where she could ensure that i find a good psychiatrist, because the antibiotics had cleared up the “mental illness” just fine, thank you. i succeeded. This experience has made me much less willingly to reach out for help from the people involved (and it’s a small community, so pretty much everyone was involved). (Their reaction has no basis in our scriptures, which say that when you are sick you should seek the best medical advice available to you and obey it. But the pseudoscience is strong in the individuals in question.)
My neighbours are mostly elderly and I would feel improper asking them to clean up my messes for me. My landlady is a dear, knows about my migraines, and if she knew I was in trouble would probably be able to find someone who could help. She’s seen my flat in disarray before (she took care of my pets when I very suddenly had to go help my mother recover from a surgery (she recovered well)). It’s mostly shame that keeps me from reaching out to people I know. And expecting other people (even those who seem trustworthy—after all, I’d known those religious people for a years) to assume I’m mentally ill instead of helping.
My girlfriend also lives far away (we’re planning to get gay marriaged and move in together, but there are a lot of logistics to sort out because her country is difficult to move to, and Hungarian is a very hard language to learn (and there are other, valid reasons that mean it would make more sense for me to move there. It will probably be another year yet till I can move. Even though we are engaged, it will take many months for the visa to be processed, and before that there a million and one hoops I have to jump through (health checks, background checks, saving up money, and more) to get the 60+ pages of forms filled out and submitted. she is available daily on skype for moral support, and can tell me when I’m overthinking things. (Until I got all these responses, I really did think that there was just some basic step to laundry washing that everyone but me knew and I was stuck going over the steps in my head trying to figure out how to get into a universe where I do not have frequent, sudden, unpredictable headaches that lead to situations like these. this step by step analysis of all of a problem is great for identifying the racing condition that is causing the bug in the code I’m writing. But it’s not useful for simple things like laundry where I understand the steps of putting clothes in, adding detergent, and taking them out, and can’t think my way into a situation where my clothes aren’t rotting in the washing machine.
I didn’t sleep last night (was too panicked about the washing machine), but today my girlfriend talked me into running it a couple times. I set it to 60°C, added extra detergent and vinegar, extra fabric softener, and ran it twice, napped, and then woke up to my mother calling to tell me to expect a phone call from my sister (who also lives far away), and I had wanted to wash it a couple more times before trying to take anything out. But I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t be able to hear my sister on the phone if the washer was going. She didn’t call till 11pm, so tomorrow I’ll wash them a few more times. I peeked after the second wash, and the fungus is no longer visisble, and the smell has decreased and was no longer dizzying. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to wash them a few more times, and if I can, I will try to take them out. If I can’t, I’m not sure what I’ll do. But I figure that the washing does seem to have killed at least some of the fungus which will make them safer to handle when I get to the point of deciding whether to put them into a trash bag and carry them downstairs to the bins or whether some of them are safe.
It might be possible to wash them daily, and then when I hit a day where my pain levels are lower I can take them out and make a decision. This does seem like a tremendous waste of water, detergent, and fabric softener, and my financial resources are not unlimited . But it’s summer, and hot, and 82% humidity, and I left out a bowl of ramen noodles that I couldnt finish last week and it grew visible fungus within 8 hours. so it’s the season where everything will rot if i’m not on the ball all the time, which i cant be. And comments here have made me realise that my usual strategy of “wait till i’m feeling well and then deal with it” won’t work if the thing that needs dealing with is actively making me sick, which it might well be.
8-hours to grow fungus on cooked food seems far too fast.
I am not an expert on this. You should find an expert on this either here or in your local community to look at conditions in your apartment.
My concern is that you may have fungus/mold elsewhere in your apartment (perhaps behind the dry-wall i.e. in the walls) or elsewhere, and that this fungus is releasing spores that’re growing in your ramen.
As a preliminary measure, I suggest improving the ventilation by keeping the windows open and maybe the front door to create a cross-breeze.
Do you have access to a free medical expert like a doctor or clinic? I would go there as soon as possible and tell them about the fungus growing on your clothes, growing on your ramen after 8 hours, as well as your migraines and any other problems. They may be able to contact the correct authorities if there is a public health hazard.
Once again, I am not an expert and have little direct knowledge about this; however, in all my experience living in very hot and humid climates I’ve never seen fungus grow on cooked food left out over 8 hours. I hope the other LWers here can provide better clarity into whether my concern is valid.
I’m not an expert either, but I think there’s enough evidence to be pretty certain there’s a problem. I don’t know whether the authorities in Hungary are likely to be helpful, or what kinds of cleaning services are available or how much they cost. It might even be worth moving to a different apartment.
Well, it was food left out of refrigeration as well. I’ve never really thought of ramen as cooked food—it was heated in the microwave for the required time, though, so I suppose you’re right.
Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30. The amount of growth was small—just a few clusters less than a centimetre in diametre, but black and definitely fungus. I put it on the opposite side of the room where it wouldn’t be near me and let it grow a little longer and it was covered within a few days.
The building is made entirely of concrete. If you think of a stereotypical cold war era eastern european apartment building, you’ll get the idea, though ours has been prettied up (insulated, new windows put in, painted cheerfully) by the city. The walls in this room are hard to the touch, but in my bedroom, the wall is slightly spongy, but not visibly damaged in any way. The sponginess is uniform throughout and feels like I’m pressing against styrofoam instead of concrete. I assumed it was some sort of insulation.
I live on the fifth floor with cats and have no fly screens. There are shutters in the bedroom, so I leave the windows open and the shutters closed, so that air can get in, but cats can’t get out. The window in this room leads to a balcony, though, which the cats are scared of because they don’t like the noises from the street, so I can open the window in here as well if I keep an eye on them. They really like sitting on windowsills, though, so I’m careful about that. The cats aren’t allowed in the kitchen (enforced by a closed door), so I can leave windows open there. I can also air out different rooms alternately with closed doors.
This is what the fungus looks like that was on my clothes: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012sbbx I managed to wash it twice yesterday, which decreased the smell and made the spots go away. I want to wash it a few more times before deciding what to do, and I think washing will kill at least enough of the spores to make it safe for me to throw them out, if I deem them unsalvageable.
There is a doctor I know of who would see me for free that I could go to. I’ve lived here for almost three years, and I really like my landlady. Also, I’m planning to move in with my girlfriend in about a year. It can’t be sooner, because it will take a long time for my visa application to be processed. I am still at the satge where I have to run around and gather things for the application, but health problems makes it difficult. I want to improve my life as much as I can before I can move, but I’m reluctant to do drastic things ilke move out when I know I’ll be moving again so soon.
If your health deteriorates further then you will not be able to complete your planned move, much less do something drastic like move now.
If your environment has toxic fungus, you cannot live for a year there and expect to be in any condition to move, to apply for a visa, or perhaps to be out of the hospital. I am trying not to be alarmist, and would very much like the opinion of better informed readers on the relative danger/safety of your situation, but you need to examine how much you weigh the inconvenience of moving or doing something about the problem versus your health or existential risks.
I’ve moved four times in the last three years across three continents. I’ve been lucky enough to not be coping with migraines and to have enough cashflow to make it work. I only mention it to point out that it is eminently feasible.
Is there anyone you can stay with for say a week to see if your condition improves vis-a-vie the migraines?
Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30.
I don’t know whether you can afford it, but it may help to buy a dehumidifier to lower the humidity in & near your kitchen. That should make it harder for mould to grow successfully.
A new one costs £100-200 here (which Google’s currency converter says is about 30k-60k HUF), but they should last for 3-10 years, so the cost is amortized over quite a long time. The only maintenance they should need is being emptied daily (maybe twice a day in a very humid environment), which only takes a couple of minutes.
Edit: of course, before you buy one, it’s probably a good idea to borrow one from a friend or hire one so you can test it for a few weeks and see if there’s an improvement first.
More information about your situation might be useful here. My first suggestion is to see if you can find someone local to help you with it (friends, family), but that seems like an obvious enough solution that I expect that if it were that simple you’d have done it already. So, what resources do you have available?
Seconded. This looks like a job for another human. Where are you staying at, pthalo?
southern Hungary. A bit of a swim from the location listed in your profile, it seems. :)
Yea. With migraines like that it is unreasonable to expect that you should be able to do anything like this on your own. Please get help before you get sick from the unsanitary conditions.
I will try. I really did think there was some simple answer that I was missing that would enable me to do it on my own, like everyone does, but i wasn’t accounting for the fact that the people who manage to stay on top of their laundry dont have disabling migraines.
I have a mother who lives very far away, who would spend money she didnt have to come help me if she knew, but I’d feel very guilty about the whole thing.
My best friend is currently at a summer camp like training thing for a new job and following that is moving to Budapest (2 hour train ride away) with her boyfriend (my other friend). So they’re very busy right now and currently unavailable, and they’ve helped me out so much with other things in the past, that I dont want to be a burden on them. I’m ashamed of the condition of the apartment, but I know they would be understanding.
i have a religious community, but the last time i was very sick, in 2009, (3 weeks of influenza + 3 weeks of strep throat), I asked for help getting to a doctor (I had a high fever, was sleeping 22 hours a day, could not keep even a small sip of water down, and was terrified that i was going to die of dehydration). They helped me get to a doctor and get antibiotics and medicine to help me keep things down, but while they were here, they took one look at my flat (a mess. i was too busy throwing up to keep things tidy) and wrote my mother a letter saying that i was clearly mentally ill because of disarray I was living in which reflects an inner disarray of mind and emotion and my mother was so worried that she flew out to see me (which she could not afford to do), but by the time she got here I had mostly recovered and I made an effort to show her that I was okay, not having a nervous breakdown, was a little weak after a physical illness which had led to the mess that had been there (all tidied up in a frenzy that i wasn’t really well enough to do before my mother arrived), and that i did not need to be taken back to live with her where she could ensure that i find a good psychiatrist, because the antibiotics had cleared up the “mental illness” just fine, thank you. i succeeded. This experience has made me much less willingly to reach out for help from the people involved (and it’s a small community, so pretty much everyone was involved). (Their reaction has no basis in our scriptures, which say that when you are sick you should seek the best medical advice available to you and obey it. But the pseudoscience is strong in the individuals in question.)
My neighbours are mostly elderly and I would feel improper asking them to clean up my messes for me. My landlady is a dear, knows about my migraines, and if she knew I was in trouble would probably be able to find someone who could help. She’s seen my flat in disarray before (she took care of my pets when I very suddenly had to go help my mother recover from a surgery (she recovered well)). It’s mostly shame that keeps me from reaching out to people I know. And expecting other people (even those who seem trustworthy—after all, I’d known those religious people for a years) to assume I’m mentally ill instead of helping.
My girlfriend also lives far away (we’re planning to get gay marriaged and move in together, but there are a lot of logistics to sort out because her country is difficult to move to, and Hungarian is a very hard language to learn (and there are other, valid reasons that mean it would make more sense for me to move there. It will probably be another year yet till I can move. Even though we are engaged, it will take many months for the visa to be processed, and before that there a million and one hoops I have to jump through (health checks, background checks, saving up money, and more) to get the 60+ pages of forms filled out and submitted. she is available daily on skype for moral support, and can tell me when I’m overthinking things. (Until I got all these responses, I really did think that there was just some basic step to laundry washing that everyone but me knew and I was stuck going over the steps in my head trying to figure out how to get into a universe where I do not have frequent, sudden, unpredictable headaches that lead to situations like these. this step by step analysis of all of a problem is great for identifying the racing condition that is causing the bug in the code I’m writing. But it’s not useful for simple things like laundry where I understand the steps of putting clothes in, adding detergent, and taking them out, and can’t think my way into a situation where my clothes aren’t rotting in the washing machine.
I didn’t sleep last night (was too panicked about the washing machine), but today my girlfriend talked me into running it a couple times. I set it to 60°C, added extra detergent and vinegar, extra fabric softener, and ran it twice, napped, and then woke up to my mother calling to tell me to expect a phone call from my sister (who also lives far away), and I had wanted to wash it a couple more times before trying to take anything out. But I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t be able to hear my sister on the phone if the washer was going. She didn’t call till 11pm, so tomorrow I’ll wash them a few more times. I peeked after the second wash, and the fungus is no longer visisble, and the smell has decreased and was no longer dizzying. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to wash them a few more times, and if I can, I will try to take them out. If I can’t, I’m not sure what I’ll do. But I figure that the washing does seem to have killed at least some of the fungus which will make them safer to handle when I get to the point of deciding whether to put them into a trash bag and carry them downstairs to the bins or whether some of them are safe.
It might be possible to wash them daily, and then when I hit a day where my pain levels are lower I can take them out and make a decision. This does seem like a tremendous waste of water, detergent, and fabric softener, and my financial resources are not unlimited . But it’s summer, and hot, and 82% humidity, and I left out a bowl of ramen noodles that I couldnt finish last week and it grew visible fungus within 8 hours. so it’s the season where everything will rot if i’m not on the ball all the time, which i cant be. And comments here have made me realise that my usual strategy of “wait till i’m feeling well and then deal with it” won’t work if the thing that needs dealing with is actively making me sick, which it might well be.
8-hours to grow fungus on cooked food seems far too fast.
I am not an expert on this. You should find an expert on this either here or in your local community to look at conditions in your apartment.
My concern is that you may have fungus/mold elsewhere in your apartment (perhaps behind the dry-wall i.e. in the walls) or elsewhere, and that this fungus is releasing spores that’re growing in your ramen.
As a preliminary measure, I suggest improving the ventilation by keeping the windows open and maybe the front door to create a cross-breeze.
Do you have access to a free medical expert like a doctor or clinic? I would go there as soon as possible and tell them about the fungus growing on your clothes, growing on your ramen after 8 hours, as well as your migraines and any other problems. They may be able to contact the correct authorities if there is a public health hazard.
Once again, I am not an expert and have little direct knowledge about this; however, in all my experience living in very hot and humid climates I’ve never seen fungus grow on cooked food left out over 8 hours. I hope the other LWers here can provide better clarity into whether my concern is valid.
I’m not an expert either, but I think there’s enough evidence to be pretty certain there’s a problem. I don’t know whether the authorities in Hungary are likely to be helpful, or what kinds of cleaning services are available or how much they cost. It might even be worth moving to a different apartment.
Well, it was food left out of refrigeration as well. I’ve never really thought of ramen as cooked food—it was heated in the microwave for the required time, though, so I suppose you’re right.
Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30. The amount of growth was small—just a few clusters less than a centimetre in diametre, but black and definitely fungus. I put it on the opposite side of the room where it wouldn’t be near me and let it grow a little longer and it was covered within a few days.
The building is made entirely of concrete. If you think of a stereotypical cold war era eastern european apartment building, you’ll get the idea, though ours has been prettied up (insulated, new windows put in, painted cheerfully) by the city. The walls in this room are hard to the touch, but in my bedroom, the wall is slightly spongy, but not visibly damaged in any way. The sponginess is uniform throughout and feels like I’m pressing against styrofoam instead of concrete. I assumed it was some sort of insulation.
I live on the fifth floor with cats and have no fly screens. There are shutters in the bedroom, so I leave the windows open and the shutters closed, so that air can get in, but cats can’t get out. The window in this room leads to a balcony, though, which the cats are scared of because they don’t like the noises from the street, so I can open the window in here as well if I keep an eye on them. They really like sitting on windowsills, though, so I’m careful about that. The cats aren’t allowed in the kitchen (enforced by a closed door), so I can leave windows open there. I can also air out different rooms alternately with closed doors.
This is what the fungus looks like that was on my clothes: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012sbbx I managed to wash it twice yesterday, which decreased the smell and made the spots go away. I want to wash it a few more times before deciding what to do, and I think washing will kill at least enough of the spores to make it safe for me to throw them out, if I deem them unsalvageable.
There is a doctor I know of who would see me for free that I could go to. I’ve lived here for almost three years, and I really like my landlady. Also, I’m planning to move in with my girlfriend in about a year. It can’t be sooner, because it will take a long time for my visa application to be processed. I am still at the satge where I have to run around and gather things for the application, but health problems makes it difficult. I want to improve my life as much as I can before I can move, but I’m reluctant to do drastic things ilke move out when I know I’ll be moving again so soon.
If your health deteriorates further then you will not be able to complete your planned move, much less do something drastic like move now.
If your environment has toxic fungus, you cannot live for a year there and expect to be in any condition to move, to apply for a visa, or perhaps to be out of the hospital. I am trying not to be alarmist, and would very much like the opinion of better informed readers on the relative danger/safety of your situation, but you need to examine how much you weigh the inconvenience of moving or doing something about the problem versus your health or existential risks.
I’ve moved four times in the last three years across three continents. I’ve been lucky enough to not be coping with migraines and to have enough cashflow to make it work. I only mention it to point out that it is eminently feasible.
Is there anyone you can stay with for say a week to see if your condition improves vis-a-vie the migraines?
I don’t know whether you can afford it, but it may help to buy a dehumidifier to lower the humidity in & near your kitchen. That should make it harder for mould to grow successfully.
A new one costs £100-200 here (which Google’s currency converter says is about 30k-60k HUF), but they should last for 3-10 years, so the cost is amortized over quite a long time. The only maintenance they should need is being emptied daily (maybe twice a day in a very humid environment), which only takes a couple of minutes.
Edit: of course, before you buy one, it’s probably a good idea to borrow one from a friend or hire one so you can test it for a few weeks and see if there’s an improvement first.