During the summer my family in Southern California will occasionally say,
"Oh, isn't it humid today."
and I'll say,
"You don't know what humid is! Southern California is the desert! Humid is when you go for a walk and can't breathe. Humid is when bread gets moldy in a day. Humid is when the walls turn green!"
Every summer I come back to Japanese humidity and start wiping things down. The walls, the cupboards, ALL the dishes, any shoes in the shoe cupboard, belts, light switches. I'm claiming that the humidity has caused our rice cooker and my digital dictionary to short out. (I don't know if that's really true but they sat here unused for the month and wouldn't work when I got back.)
Mold must grow anywhere but it is most obvious on any wooden or leather surface. And I guess it grows wherever someone has touched something. I tossed a whole closet full of stuff in the garbage last weekend, including nylon sports bags because the handles and pockets were fuzzy! I also grossed out when I was looking through my sewing drawers and found bamboo knitting needles in the same furry state! Those all went in the garbage too!
Yesterday my children's English class had some coloring to do in the workbooks. I brought out the colored pencils."Sensei! What is that all over the pencils? I'm not touching those!"
Mold!!! Yuck!!! I got out the alcohol wipes, gave each pencil a scrub, and they were usable again...
Humidity makes mold grow in the darnedest places! YUCK!!!
10 comments:
Tanya, here we have a product called" Damp Rid", moisture absorbent granules.They sit in the top part of a two way container,and when the bottomn is full of liquid,lift out the top part where the granules go, and pour out the water and start again.Works very well!! Maybe you need one of these in every room ...Spring day here, blossoms blooming,grass growing,lawn needs mowing,blocks ready for quilting. Cheers from Jean.
The humidity sounds terrible. Could you use a dehumidifier? We live in a very dry climate so don't really know how you cope with it. All the mold does not sound pleasant.
When I hear my kids in Oregon complain about the heat, I know how short their memories have become! I think I am rusting from the humidity. De-humidifiers? Pure tokenism. Gambatte kiddo!
We have many similiar devices to that which Nancy J has mentioned here in Hong Kong! They work estremely well, but need to be changed every 2 or 3 months! I haven't seen the same things in Japan (when I was there), but look around the DIY shops! goodluck!
I would find achieving anything in that sort of humidity difficult, and if I had to keep cleaning everything that was already clean I'd go mad!
Hi Tanya, I think I know what about you are talking to us today : the humidity is something awful and I remember that all our clothes and shoes were getting very quickly damaged by the humidity when we lived in Lima (Perou), close to the pacific ocean.
I don't know Japan yet, but we are planing to go there with my husband and of course, we try to learn the japanese lenguage : it is really difficult but so rich and so beautiful : for the moment, I only know how to write the hiragana and some kangi.
Have a nice day,
Isa
what a nightmare for you.
how on earth do you manage to look after all your fabric and sewing gear.
joan
UK
With all of the moving around I've done over the years I've lived in areas where the humidity is as bad as you've mentioned in this post. It's no picnic. I can remember times when the humity was so high you could see it in the air and breathing was nearly impossible and forget about feeling dry. I'm lucky to have settled in an area where that is no longer a problem. Hopefully what you're currently experiencing will soon pass.
I can't imagine having to deal with humidity. My cleaning skills are already maxed out with normal weather!
Another good thing about air conditioning...it sucks out the humidity. Our window AC will fill a five gallon bucket at least once a day during the most humid weather. Imagine all that water in the air! It's also pretty efficient and doesn't cost much to run.
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