“So, what do you do?”

“Mold,” I replied

“MOLD? Whaddya mean, mold? You do castings? Jello?”

“We help people find mold in their homes and get rid of it.”

“Oh. (Eww…) You can actually make a living doing that?”

“Actually, yes, we do.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Not really,” I said. “But it’s important.”

The sad truth is, there is no fun in fungi. Even though I can be a fun guy, especially when the lampshade goes on the head at the party, fungi are not fun. Fun Gus is one thing. Fungus is another.

Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my work. I do, mostly because I know it’s important to tell people about fungi, molds, indoor air quality, moisture problems, and all the health hazards people face from a little mold inside a wall.

But we don’t hit the top of the charts on Google, we don’t have huge crowds following us on Twitter and Facebook. We’re not ringtones, or games, or music, or videos. We don’t make anyone laugh out loud. We’re not iPhones, or iPods or iPads. We’re not about toys, or bright colors or any of that. We’re not cool. We’re not fun.

Our rhetoric is dry, our topic is usually damp, and always moldy. Blechh. (No, no! Don’t use bleach on mold!)

Over at 1800gotmold.com, it’s a little livelier, because we have the dogs. Everyone loves dogs. And we have some cool high-tech gadgets to help us pin down the mold infestations our dogs tell us are there. And we have great stories sometimes about how someone who was really sick got healthy and happy after their mold problem was eliminated.

But it’s still mold. So no groupies, no fan clubs, no cheering throngs. No fun. Nobody wants to read about mold until they think they have a mold problem. Then, they’re a little freaked and looking for answers, and sometimes looking for simple, fast answers. There aren’t any. And it’s not fun dealing with fungi.

A lot of people want to know what type of mold they have, or what type of mold is bad for people. They think, “Well, if it’s harmless mold I can just ignore it.” And we have be the party pooper and tell them there’s no such thing as harmless mold in your house.

Yeah, there are the little streaks of mildew on your tile grout, and you can scrub that off and not worry much about it. Except that you need to make sure your grout and caulk are sound, and that water hasn’t already gotten behind the tile, because hidden mold inside a wall can make a lot of people sick. Plus, eventually, all that tile will end up in a heap in the tub and you’ve got an emergency on your hands. So we can’t even be cavalier about a little moldy grout.

A lot of people have been buying those mold test kits you see in the big-box home stores, because they’re cheap, and they promise to tell you if you have BLACK MOLD! or TOXIC MOLD! in your house. And we have to go and spoil it again, and tell them no, those kits won’t tell you anything, at least not anything useful.

See, there’s all kinds of science behind the way professional mold assessment people test for mold. There’s about as much science in those cheap kits as there is in a Chia Pet. Well, maybe less. Chia Pets are kinda cool, and you can eat chia.

Those cheap kits have so much wrong with them it’s not even funny. There I go again. Not funny, no fun. Anyway, here’s the unfunny truth.

The way the cheap kits work is they use what’s known as a settling plate: a little dish with goo in it and a lid. In a lab it might be called a Petri dish. What you’re supposed to do is take the lid off and put the dish of goo out on a table or a counter for a couple of days, and see what grows in it. They give you some pictures to compare with what grows in your goo, so you can decide what it is. You’re an expert now, right?

You might as well just leave a wet slice of bread on the counter. It’ll get moldy. So what? Drop a hamburger on the floor and the dog will eat it. Put a handful of peanuts on the porch and the squirrels will eat them. Put out some goo that mold likes, and mold will grow in it. Now what do you know that you didn’t know before? Nothing. Mold spores are, literally, everywhere. So setting out a mold banquet to see who stops by to eat is pointless.

Then there’s the claim on the cheap test kits that they can tell you if you have BLACK MOLD! Hogwash. They can’t do anything of the sort, for a couple of reasons. First, you’re not going to leave it out long enough to grow the black stuff, called Stachybotrys, because it takes a long time to establish itself. And second, the goo they put in the settling plate is not Stachybotrys food! It won’t grow there.

What you need to know is this: What’s in the air you’re breathing, and does that provide evidence of indoor mold growth? The only way to know this is to sample the air, both indoors and out, and analyze and compare those samples microscropically. If you have a higher count indoors than outdoors, or if you have types of mold indoors that don’t show up outdoors, it’s a red flag. It means you may have indoor mold growth.

There are three ways to get these kinds of samples and have them analyzed. One is to hire a professional mold assessment company, meaning you’ll spend something in the neighborhood of $1,000 for an expert eye and some air samples. The second way is to buy one of the old-style mold test kits with the expensive, complicated air pump that you have to return, and which, if you break it or lose it, could cost you plenty. And you’ll spend $350 to $500 for the deal, plus $100 or so per sample, and you’ll get a report you can’t comprehend.

Third is the GOT MOLD? Test Kit, which includes a disposable pump, clear and easy instructions and tons of extra information, plus a report that’s color-coded, simple, straightforward, and tells you what to do next. And it’s $99, plus lab work, but the lab work is less costly than all the others at $30 per sample (and the first one’s free), so that the MOST you can spend if you go crazy with all the samples is $150, making your total cost just $249.

Dealing with a mold problem is not fun. Reading about mold is not fun. We know we’re in a no-fun business, which is why we decided to make it easy and simple and less expensive.

Maybe that’ll put a smile on your face.