I head over to my parents house with a stomach ache. I’ve eaten something again that doesn’t agree with me and I have no lemons.

I greet my parents and head into their kitchen to pick a lemon from the fruit bowl.

“I’m just going to juice a lemon as I have a stomach ache,” I say to mum.

I cut the lemon and see that on one side it’s become soft. She sees it too and says, “just cut out that bit or get another fresh one.”

A day later back at home, I noticed I did have one at the bottom of my fruit bowl. It was growing mould. So I took a marker pen and drew around it and made a note of the time (12:38pm).

I wonder how much mould will go over the next few days? ?

I send the photo to my friend Fiona (or @whiteowly on Twitter) she seems to think it’ll be quicker. So now I’m intrigued.

Two day later, the mould has spread. I think by this rate we would both be wrong. By Sunday night, it will be fully mouldy? ?

At one stage I wonder what happens if I shine direct UV light onto the mould? So out comes the torch…

By Monday all but the tip is covered and I notice that before the mould is green, it’s white meaning already that part of the lemon is beginning to rot. Mould comes in all sorts of different colours that can be found in our homes.

By Tuesday all of it will be covered and it’s time to end this experiment as I don’t want to have an asthma attack. I bag it all up, dispose of it all and wash my hands and the area.

An Aside About Why I Love Lemons

Whenever I have a stomach ache or in particular, the first feelings of food poisoning, juicing one lemon and then drinking the juice straight, stops the pain immediately. I have no idea why. It might be an old wives tale? I’ve never checked it to verify it because frankly, it just seems to work instantly. (Looking online, articles say that the acid of the lemon juice breaks down the consumed food in your stomach quickly through the digestive tract?). I’ve no idea if this is research based evidence. ?

Whatever it is, lemon juice just works. It given me that extra time I needed to get myself sorted for a food poisoning bout of vomiting or diarrhoea. A lemon will stave off that initial feeling when you feel your stomach churning when you’ve eaten something that didn’t agree with you. Both at work and while travelling, straight lemon juice has been my saviour.

I’ve often thought to carry one around in my bag always.

Looking at this lemon all week has made me super curious about mould in general.

Why Mould Irks Me

We have mould at our place and I try to control it as much as possible. (We all do – mould is everywhere). It’s both a fascinating subject to realise that these little spores that can grow and spread in our homes can rapidly overtake any area within 24-48 hours and relatively difficult to control completely. You can’t.

Over winter, when windows are closed, specks of black mould grow and I keep it at bay by removing it then spraying the area with clove oil and opening windows to air the area as much as possible. Other times I have noticed specks of pink mould on my linens stored away in my linen cupboard. Last weekend I cleaned out this cupboard and turfed out anything with mould on it. Pillows are the worst. I would recommend you check them every month to see what’s growing on them! I wash mine and hang them out in the sunlight and ditch them after a year or so.

I’ll never forget the day where I removed a pillow slip and found mould growing on a pillow I had stored away. It was the most disgusting thing I had seen that sent me on a rabid cleaning frenzy.

Mould affects me and it brings on an asthma attack so I lookout for it but never took the time to understand what it is and the different kinds there are around the house.

Anyway, I continue on my mould cleaning and can anticipate there will be more of it as we have had lots of wet weather. I think I just have to be vigilant about it and make sure that I keep things as dry as possible by having a lot more ventilation through the house and not worry about arctic temperatures in it during winter. ?