View Full Version : the bugs are killing me,
I can't take it, I am ready to move to a hotel with all new everything today. Not that I have that kind of money but it is horrible.
I confess that we have bed bugs. i don't invite people over, I don't relax, I clean all the time. It is really awful. I can usually deal and then they upsurge. Well the last couple days I have had more bites again, I washed everything in hot, dried for an hour, got a new comforter and put all other bedding in space bags. I got my older daughters stuff cleaned out enough to spray in the storage area. Then today I see where I have scratched the bites are swelling up on each other.
I am also scared that in Colorado the landlord does not need to pay for treatment, we have been here 3 years and so they may not have been in the house when we moved in. I So if she finds out can she force me to pay for a certain treatment? Can she evict me? can she take my deposit when I move? We have been treating and washing and following all recommendations but they are so hard to get rid of. I feel that the only option I have is to continue to self-treat because I don't want to lose my place to live, may sound extreme but not if we got ourselves after we moved in, right?
Okay taking a deep breath, going to declutter a little more and spray the entire wood floor again.
rosarugosa
8-29-13, 9:25pm
Oh Zoe Girl, I wish I had words of wisdom for you, but I only have sympathy. You didn't give birth to these critters; even if they moved in while you were there, it's just a matter of misfortune and not anything that you've done wrong. Good luck with getting them out of your life!
That is terrible! I feel for you!
I have heard from friends that have had bed bugs, that the only truly effective way to get rid of them for good is to use a good exterminator. Have you checked out any exterminators in your area? It might not be too costly, and so worth it in the long run...
You have my sympathies, truly.
But I think you are obligated to tell your landlord, especially if you share walls with others living on the other side of you (I can't recall if you have a house or apt.?) Bed bugs are harder to control the longer it goes on without professional pest control treatment, and you are obligated as a tenant to mitigate any damages to the property. (e.g., you have to report a small water leak before it turns into a huge dollar repair).
I don't know what all the consequences may be, but you can't continue to live like this.
try2bfrugal
8-30-13, 11:23am
I don't know where I first saw this, maybe it was on this forum, but did you try this home remedy for bed bugs written up in the New York Times -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/science/earth/how-a-leafy-folk-remedy-stopped-bedbugs-in-their-tracks.html?_r=0
Thank you all, I did try a few bean leaves but maybe the trick is a LOT of them. I will start really watering the green bean plants, they have been overshadowed by zucchini.
I got advice to check with housing authority. They may have help with exterminator cost or at leas making sure I don't get evicted or something. I do not share any walls, I guess I would feel better if I did about calling and asking her to deal with this. As it is I have sprayed or bug bombed 2 times a year since we moved in. Then I found out cockroaches eat bed bugs and I stopped doing their traps. I think i actually got rid of the other bugs. Everything in my kitchen is sealed so as long as I wash or rinse dishes right before I use them I guess I can live with that until the bed bugs are gone. I thought they were pretty much gone, no bites for 4 months until a few weeks ago.
Zoe Girl, what are you doing with your mattress, box spring, and bed frames? They were the worst places for eggs/larvae when we got hit a couple of years ago. We had to do everything the same day (ALL bedrooms), spraying everything with isopropyl alcohol, dusting all crevices with diatomaceous earth, toasting everything -- EVERYTHING -- in the dryer or sealing it in trash bags or throwing it away, then bagging the mattress and box springs in bugproof bags, taping the seams shut, et al. It was a long day and night, but I never had another bite.
pug you have given me hope, I have most everything sealed, I need a bag for my son's box spring and then we can do an all in one effort. He has a metal bed frame, I got rid of my box spring last year and got a frame from Ikea. That was about the time we stopped seeing them. The other issue really has been my oldest who recently moved out. It would have been impossible to try and coordinate a spraying with her living with us. She has so much stuff and she is generally uncooperative with us. So I working on getting her stuff OUT so we can coordinate what you talked about.
I am going to order the bags to finish the job and work with my kids to do the spraying next weekend. I think I woke up with no bites this morning!!
I recently read about this in Organic Gardening magazine and thought it was interesting. Apparently kidney bean leaves can be used to kill bed bugs.
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2013/04/kidney-bean-leaves-may-help-eradicate-bedbugs-study-suggests
it is interesting, I do not have many bean plants so I am not sure it would be effective to treat 3 bedrooms with leaves. However I will be looking for the artificial methods coming soon hopefully .
The tips about vacuuming and cleaning with hot water are helpful for our big cleaning weekend. i wondered about painting the walls, One room has been painted recently and has them but the others have not been and have cracks in some places.
rodeosweetheart
9-3-13, 6:41am
it is interesting, I do not have many bean plants so I am not sure it would be effective to treat 3 bedrooms with leaves. However I will be looking for the artificial methods coming soon hopefully .
The tips about vacuuming and cleaning with hot water are helpful for our big cleaning weekend. i wondered about painting the walls, One room has been painted recently and has them but the others have not been and have cracks in some places.
Zoe, at one time I bought one of those shark portable wand steam cleaners--it actually works wonderfully to spray hot steam and clean surfaces really easily--wthout chemicals. It might help with the kind of cleaning you are talking about--it was not expensive
Where we live roaches are a horrible problem and after I clean the floors, I spray all the perimeters with a pump type bug spray--it takes 1 container to do whole house, but our house real small. I think it works, because a day later, you start seeing dead bugs.
Bedbugs also hide in the heat/air ducts and behind baseboards. For that reason a bomb type thing is also a good idea.
Someone I know has been unbitten since she started pouring rubbing alcohol in a circle around each foot of the bedframe and all round the edge of the mattress each night before going to bed.
Because they don't particularly carry disease the CDC and local authorities generally don't have a protocol for them nor are landlords usually required to treat for them.
Miss Cellane
9-3-13, 8:58am
Bedbugs showed up at a hotel in my town, and now we are being bombarded by the city and state about how to deal with them.
One tip I hadn't heard elsewhere was to treat your bedframe and bedding and mattress, and then move the bed at least 6 inches from all the walls. Apparently, the bed bugs won't crawl that far out into the open, so they won't re-infrst your bed.
Just a thought if you hadn't tried that already.
My sister had bedbugs in Denver and the landlord had to pay for treatment, and maybe a mattress replacement, I don't remember. But this was an apt, and it was clear the landlord hadn't dealt with it for some time. For a single family house, it's probably different. I would imagine something happened with the kids (spending the night somewhere and got them in clothing/luggage/whatever maybe your ex or a friend). You need heat or long-term freezing to kill them; heat works better. It doesn't hurt to ask around for exterminators and look at the resources on bedbugger.com. Good luck!
pug mentioned DE and I want to re-mention it.
I didn't have bed bugs (we thought we might), and I went ahead and did the DE treatment anyway. It killed whatever was biting us, that's for sure, because we haven't had a problem since.
My friend told me about it when she did have bed bugs, and it worked well for her.
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