My name is Amanda Guptill, and I am writing you today because I need help removing the mold from my grandmother’s home. My grandma has had many health issues over the last fifteen years that have limited her ability to walk, breathe, or lift her arms. She has had to have help doing the simplest of task such as putting on her own shoes, getting herself something to eat and giving herself a bath. She has a very aggressive form of arthritis that caused her to have many replacements and surgeries. Her shoulder twice, her hip and her wrist just to name a few. Now her doctor is talking about replacing her other hip in the near future. As you can imagine it has been a very frustrating and painful experience for her but she has been a trooper and is finally getting her ability to move and walk again. Slowly but surely she is using her arm more and using her walker less and less. She has a very difficult time breathing already because of her COPD so she has to take her recovery very slowly to avoid over doing it and getting to dizzy or short of breath. She still needs quite a bit of help from me, my aunt, and my cousin even though she has the want to take care of herself, she just isn’t capable yet. All things considered when it comes to cleaning her house it was mostly my aunt who made sure things stayed in order or so I thought. My grandma lives in a three bedroom home with a basement that has an entire apartment in it and her laundry room was an addition to her home meant to be an extra room. So you can imagine my disdain when I got here and realized that my aunt has used my grandma’s home as her personal storage closet and she has completely filled two of the rooms (from top to bottom), the entire basement (including the apartment), the laundry room and even some of my grandmas room with her stuff. If you have ever watched the show Hoarders then you can get a good idea of what it looked like. My grandma could barely get her walker from her bedroom to her kitchen without getting stuck or tripping over something. It was infuriating. So I have spent months cleaning, trying to organize, throwing things away, giving things away, trying to take care of my grandma at the same time. All while my aunt is either bringing in more stuff or getting upset that stuff is being thrown out. Literally fighting me the whole time. It’s been very overwhelming to say the least. Especially at first when the only space I had to sleep was a chair in her living room. I eventually cleaned out a corner in her laundry room, and made a palate in the floor. Then my grandma finally decided to let me stay in the apartment downstairs but it was up to me to clean it out. She hadn’t been physically able to walk downstairs in many years so she had no idea how bad it really was down there. It was literally so packed full of stuff that there was barely enough space to make a narrow pathway from the entrance to the exit. I have spent months trying to make it livable down there and I have finally made some progress but then the real issue reveals itself. Mold. There is so much mold in that basement that I could taste it when I would go back upstairs. There is no possible way that it isn’t affecting the air upstairs where my grandma is and I honestly think it’s what has her feeling the way she does. She is coughing more and more and can hardly breathe. Not to mention I am sleeping down there now and I have no other possible options so I am trying my hardest to kill it and clean it all up. I feel like it’s a losing battle at this point because I only have one room of the basement cleaned out enough to start bleaching everything. The rest of the basement is still full of my aunt’s things and covered in mold. That’s why I am asking for help. I don’t know where to go from here. I continue to work my way through everything; getting rid of as much as I can, and disinfecting as I go but I need help. Im starting to feel the effects of sleeping down there and I am genuinely worried if I don’t get something done about it my grandma is going to get worse and so will I. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you.