BED BUGS

JESUS CHRIST BEDBUG COITUS WTF

I had no idea, and now I can never go back to not knowing. Fuck.

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good luck karl

"bed bugs are easy- it's fleas that are the real pain in the ass to get rid of"

yep, fleas not nearly as horrific as bedbugs but I am dealing with the 3rd wave of flea bites in last 8-9 months because the crazy lady downstairs doesn't clean her apt/take care of her cats and it vexing

What are y'all's opinions re:heat treatments? My friend swears by the ones she had done at her old apartment.

Just ordered a new bed (overdue for one anyway, but y'know, no money forever).

Might buy some of that Diatomaceous earth ment'd above to put under the bed and mattress at the hardware store.

Besides washing or burning all my clothes and towels, what else? Near zero-budget level.

btw they might be fleas, i don't know, but the doorman told me last year that someone in the building had bedbugs.

Once you have gone to INSANE-seeming lengths to get rid of them (and you should),

yeah, i just can't expend that kind of energy on anything.

also i haven't actually seen one yet, but the 3 bites i got look like the internet pics.

if you haven't already done it:

1) buy a plastic cover for your current bed, if you still have it.
2) when the new bed arrives, keep it wrapped up in plastic and away from everything else. don't want to risk ruining your nice new bed while this is going on.

the best tip that i didn't know about at the time is:

3) this'll look a little insane, but push your current bed away from the walls a few feet, then put soapy tupperware containers underneath each of the four legs. these are death moats to protect your bed. Advanced guide here: http://cchealth.org/bedbugs/pdf/How-to-Make-Your-Bed-a-Safe-Haven-from-Bed-Bugs.pdf

hmmmm... thanks.

biggest problem is i don't have a few feet. and my bed doesn't really have legs. (The frame basically broke apart years ago.)

i think getting rid of a few of the mounds of magazines and newspapers would probably help too.

hmm, not having legs on the bed is a bummer, my wife and i used these little cup things on the legs of our bed with diatomaceous earth in them when we lived in a place with bed bugs and it worked really well - never got bitten. i suppose just putting diatomaceous earth all round the bed in a little mound could help.

we threw away our box spring, dried everything fabric that would fit in a tumble dryer for like a couple of hours, and put a cover on the mattress, threw away some books that were near the bed (found a bed bug inside a copy of borges' labyrinths) . a couple of months later we were lucky enough to be able to move - our landlady's daughter had had bedbugs and left a bunch of her washing in the basement, with bedbugs in it, basically infesting the house. landlady didn't care about this or even think it was the root, was the final straw. our new place just had black mould instead of bedbugs.

thx jim & Karl

i see online that my bldg management will send an exterminator, so i guess i'm calling.

btw KM that pdf you linked recommends a fabric cover as being safer than a plastic one.

also a new frame is coming with the new bed, so i guess i could put the d-earth under the legs then.

so it's safe to unpack the new bed about a month from now?

fuckin' nightmare

Been through it -- nightmare it is.

More effective than an exterminator is if they can heat your apartment to something like 120 for 8 hours. Heat kills better than anything they can spray.

i used a fabric cover, it worked - still have the same mattress now and have been bedbug free for 3 years

commisserations dr morb

my apt goes up to 120 in August, but i hope i'll have moved by then

Ugh, bed bugs are vile and hideous. I had them for a while, though it took me long enough to find what they were and what was happening. Someone in my building had told me a while before that her neighbour had had them, I didn't think anymore about it but the little bastards are nothing if not expansionist. Anyway, ditched my bed, bed clothes etc, found them in a pile of magazines near my bed, and in the spine of a book and several other places. I got rid of them by going on a mad killing spree, armed with WD40, which kills them (and most insects) instantly. Touch wood, they've never come back (holes and knotholes in wood being somewhere they like to congregate).

... this was several years ago, so pretty certain I'm safe now.

i'm a pedestrian. does WD40 leave stains?

Probably, I'm not recommending it as anything other than a way to instantly get rid of the bastards. Professional help would be preferable.

so i take it the boxspring/mattress covers are in the bedding store

Bedding, Bathing & Beyond has them.

Bed, Bath & BED BUGS

tore the bed apart, found nobody.

spread the d-earth around.

so my landlord's exterminator refused to spray for them bcz i had no "evidence"

ie i didn't save the one i pulled off my butt at the beginning

now i have psychosomatic itching and am determined to move

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/bed-bug-madness-the-psychological-toll-of-the-blood-suckers/381447/

the new bed i bought in April is still in the box, of course.

who has a freezer big enough to put all their books?

fuck this, had a scare which, yeah, posted about up thread about a thousand years ago.

now it's the real deal, not def infesting, maybe coming from neighbors apt. dealing w/ our own pest control company we called and managements, someone's coming friday. start some treatments as well as super going to use silicone to plug up gaps around floorboard.

in the meantime box spring and mattress and pillows are covered. bed pulled away from wall. Was recommended to temporarly put masking tape covered w/ vaseline around the bed so doing that now.

bugs have no effect on me. wife is covered in huge itchy bites. we'll start drying and bagging clothes shortly but don't know what to do with all the books in the bedroom. And my entire home studio. mangement's people do the spray, they say is fine for electronics. that makes me really really nervous.

fuck this. was about to make a snarky comment about bringing back DDT but went and read about that and decided that's a stupid thing to say.

I used diatomaceous earth round the bed frame (You get special plastic cups that you put the legs in and the diatomaceous earth sits in a little moat around them). Put any fabric that can withstand being put in the dryer on high in the dryer for 90 minutes or so. Vacuum like crazy, dumping the bags immediately if you have that type of vacuum. If you have the time look through your books, I literally found a bug sitting in a book. And threw the book out. Can't think of anything else other than the spraying.

in the most horrific apartment i ever lived in, i think only reason the bedbugs went away was because ants came in and killed them

where can i get these ants you speak of?

this is a nightmare of mine. best of luck

That sucks. Does Marie Kondo have a chapter about this?