Mold – and what it’s like to be the “little guy”

Archie was only 5 weeks old and I was still limping around after major abdominal surgery when Ben discovered what appeared to be mold in our crawl space under the house. We decided to check the crawl after the floors on the lower level of our house seemed to be sinking very quickly. Upon inspection, Ben found a leak in the crawl space and TONS OF (what appeared to be) MOLD.

Back story: We moved back to Colorado in April. We really needed to and wanted to rent for one to two years to get used to Salida and Buena Vista before potentially buying property and building a home. Moving around so much is exhausting but we were really excited to find a house in a good neighborhood that we could rent for an affordable price.

We enjoyed the house, and were very sad to have discovered such toxic living conditions especially with our sweet Emery and new baby and of course after I spent $3500 a year prior to detox my body from mold in order to get pregnant. We had no idea what to do when the mold was discovered. Where would we go? We were filled with a little bit of hope when the plumber came to fix the leak, which was from a hot water pipe and said he thought it was just mildew. But our hope crashed when a few days later a mold remediation team came and said it was mold, and we needed to get out as soon as possible. She said it was “Really bad” and we should have already left. (Tests have now confirmed with certainty that it was indeed mold.)

On August 18th we moved out of our house. Archie was not even 2 months old. The owners of the property are an LLC – I’ll refer to them as QP LLC from now on- and they were giving us the ring around right from the beginning. We had no idea if they were going to cover our rental costs for the time we were gone. We looked for monthly rentals around us — nothing. We looked for Airbnb’s around us — nothing for longer than a couple of days at a time or the ones we did find had very weird dog rules (no yard, no dogs on the carpet, any sign of pet left behind and you’d be find hundreds of dollars) or were at high elevation (9,500 + which was NOT okay for a brand new baby). Ben talked to his office and they agreed to let him work remote for a while. We found a seemingly nice cabin in Bailey in which we could actually book for a big chunk of time – 11 days! We packed up two car loads of our belongings and left on the 18th.

In Bailey it was just a disaster. The cabin was filthy. The fragrance smell was so overwhelming I had horrible headaches. Dog urine on the carpet downstairs. The worst part was that the refrigerator broke on that first day. We were left without a working regular fridge (they had a tiny half working dorm fridge) from Sunday to Wednesday. We lost over $100 worth of groceries and about $100 worth of my postpartum frozen foods that defrosted and ruined from no working freezer. The Airbnb people did not refund us for our time there. We spent $1100 for 3 nights and lost $200 ish worth of food. Heartbreaking. We were able to get a refund for the remained of the 11 nights and moved to a house in the front range (Denver metro) for the remainder of that time. Another move to subject the kids and dogs to 😦

This next Airbnb in Denver was fine. It was not in a good area, but we were able to manage and it was much more affordable than so many other options and we were lucky it had a backyard for the dogs to go potty in, even if it was not safely fenced so they had to remain on leash. QP LLC gave us money to cover about 14 days of Airbnb’s through our property management company before we never heard from them again. We still haven’t heard from them. Almost 5 weeks later.

The next Airbnb was several days in Silverthorne. This way Ben could be closer to work. He had to drive 6 hours round trip one day just to get to work from the house in Denver. From Silverthorne, he would drive about an hour and 20 minutes one way to get to the office. The house in Silverthorne was safe and had a small backyard for Emery and the dogs. Sadly the house was booked up after 2 weeks, so we had to move to another location.

After Silverthorne we were finally able to book an Airbnb for longer than a couple of days in Nathrop, about 20 minutes from Ben’s office. We booked it from the 12th to the 20th I believe. Sadly, it was infested with wasps and spiders. The wasps were so bad we had to contact Airbnb Support and ask for help. We were spending our days and nights looking for wasps to keep the kids safe. What. A. Nightmare. You can imagine how discouraging everything was at that point. Another move was on the horizon. So very disheartening.

We were able to find a last minute home that was available for 7 days in Frisco, which is near Silverthorne. The elevation was just under 9,000 feet so now that Archie was almost 3 months old, we felt safe in that elevation. The host had cut the price a decent amount luckily because it was not booked for the week. No backyard for the dogs, but access to some trees and grass outside. We are here now in Frisco but we have to leave tomorrow. Another move. It has been really hard to live out of a suitcase, eat out so much, use someone else’s kitchen with limited supplies, pack all our belongings in our 2 cars every week and move. Again and again and again.

Our property manager had originally told us we’d be able to move back in to our rental tomorrow, September 21st. Ben had texted him recently and asked for a phone call, but he rarely responds anymore. This means not only have we not once heard from QP LLC, but we also haven’t heard regularly from our property manager. We have been completely ghosted. Per Colorado law we were supposed to get our lodging covered and a daily per diem while out of the house, but of course we’ve only received a small portion of the money we’ve spent on these Airbnb’s, and zero dollars of the per diem. We also are owed the half of the rent from the month of August that we paid for a house that was uninhabitable, but no, they haven’t paid that either. It is very apparent in this case who the little guy is vs. the big guy. It has been so, so devastating to us and our finances.

Last night Ben tried to reach our property manage again because we were getting ready to pack up and head back to our home. We got a text back saying something along the lines of – the floor isn’t available for the house (it has to be replaced), and maybe we can move back in on the 28th. The 28th!!!! Another 8 days!!! We had no home lined up after tomorrow, the 21st. We were scrambling at 9pm last night to find housing for us and our kids and the dogs. We looked all throughout the state. Almost everything with good reviews (safe, clean, accurate) was booked. We are now forced to go back to the front range and spend $3,000 out of pocket for another Airbnb for 8 days. We don’t even know if this one is in a safe area. We put all of our faith in reviews but so far, 2 of the Airbnbs have been nightmares. What will this one be???

I can’t tell you what a great sense of loss I feel for my kids. Poor Emery doesn’t understand whats going on. She has had really bad regressions since leaving our home. Our fully potty trained daughter started soiling herself again. Many, many times. We read a psychologists take on this — how moving to a new home or big stress in the child’s life can cause major potty training regressions. Absolutely heartbreaking to know she has been impacted so much from all of this. I feel my postpartum healing time has been stripped from me. It is so important to cocoon a new baby and instead we’ve moved 5x in under 5 weeks, and all the moving meant no more rest for me. Some days my incision site aches so bad I could cry. Our sweet boy has had any routine stripped from his first few months of life. The hardest part for me was week 2 when all of the stress of being away from my home, dealing with Emery’s regressions and trying to get used to caring for her and a new baby out of our house with no yard and no safety net of home completely depleted my milk supply. I was having to supplement Archie bottles of pumped milk, was having to spend several minutes a day pumping, and eventually had to start a new supplement to help boost my milk. Prior to all of this happening, I had an oversupply. Stress is the number one killer of milk supply. Boy, did I learn that.

So tomorrow we move. Again. I’m just really upset. Today I finally cried. It’s just too hard holding it all in anymore. Airbnb’s are also so very hard to deal with. So, so hard. I am thankful they exist, sure, but it is SO HARD living in someone else’s home with just a few of our belongings. If we were rich we’d just go rent a nice vacation home for a month. But instead I’ve spent HOURS AND HOURS trying to find the cheaper options for us that are still highly rated because there is just sooo much risk that comes along with renting someone else’s home that you need to find a place with good reviews. What if a home made our newborn baby sick? What if there had been drugs in the house? What if the house is in an unsafe area? What if the house is dirty? Utilizing Airbnb is risky. So the hours upon hours is the price to pay, along with the actual price to pay (thousands of $).

I wrote this post on my Instagram a couple of weeks ago but I’ll share it here–

It’s so hard lingering between being thankful and bitter. The past month has been such a challenge. But I look down at little Arch and across the room at Emery and am so thankful to have two healthy kids and a roof over our heads. So much to be thankful for. Truly. But I am so bitter. Archie was 5 weeks old when we discovered the floor sinking and the mold in our house (rental). Since then we’ve lost our house, been completely ghosted by our landlord, paid thousands out of pocket to keep a nice roof over our heads comparable to what we had, and have had to move four times with two cars so full of belongings we can barely move. Yesterday we drove back to our house to get the mail and we can see through the windows that they haven’t done work in several days. Ben is an attorney and believes this is a kind of forced eviction. They don’t complete the work or pay for our housing so we’ll just move out because they want to sell instead of rent. We have a brand new baby 😭 We have a toddler who is having massive regressions. The stress is overwhelming. I usually like visiting different parts of the state and for a few moments can look around and be thankful for the beauty of Colorado but I feel my postpartum has been hijacked as well as any normalcy my kids had. The owners of the house are an LLC/private corporation and it’s never been more apparent how the big people can crap all over the little people. As I said, thankful…. But so very bitter.

My Dad keeps reiterating that it can be worse and obviously, we know that. But it can ALWAYS be worse. That does not mean the pain we’re going through now is not valid. Because it absolutely is. Right now I am just thankful that we have a credit card to put all of these costs on, and that today Archie is 3 months old and despite the ridiculous past 4+ weeks and 5 moves and a house full of mold, he has remained healthy for now.