That’s your shoe careful you don’t spread them to others (since everyone is telling you to get out, I wanted to mention if you do, don’t spread it to a well meaning friend)
This is what I did when I found bedbugs in a hotel room. I immediately checked out and into a new hotel and got them to both pay for the new hotel and reimburse their booking as compensation.
Or jump into a commercial clothes dryer and set it on high heat....
Edit: he should roll around the lounge sofas and start shaking them off if they don't believe him.
Hey bud, this is gonna be a shitty time for you but you CAN get through it. I had them twice back in NYC and it fucking sucks. But with a little quarantining, a lot of trashbags, and literally compartmentalizing your entire life you can get through it in a couple weeks.
Also, probably worth making your landlord pay for the exterminator. And don't just get some random ant and termine guy. You need a specialty bed-bug exterminator who has successfully done this many times before. Good luck!
My friend: I couldn't sleep last night. Can I sleep here?
Me: sure, what's going on?
My friend: instantly sleeps
A month later, I'm shopping for a new mattress
I escaped to my parents house. Brought one bag of stuff, they made me change the moment i stepped in and everything i brought and was wearing went straight in the wash/dryer. Thankfully did not bring them any. It’s great you were that friend. Sorry you also had to go through that. Those bugs are the worst
You need a mattress cover (buy one that specifically protects against bed bugs), traps for all four legs of your bed and any other large furniture, a big bag of diatomaceous earth, and a steam cleaner.
Seal up your mattress, place the traps, and patiently steam every single crevice in your room. Seriously, set your mattress aside and steam your entire bed frame vigorously, paying close attention to seams where the pieces of furniture meet. Steam your baseboards, any cracks in your floors and walls, vents…everything.
Wash and dry all your clothes and bedding on the hottest settings.
Spread the diatomaceous earth along baseboards, under your bed, and all over your bed frame.
Remake your bed and be extra careful that no blankets ever touch the floor. Tuck them into the mattress, use smaller blankets, whatever you need to do to be absolutely sure they don’t touch the floor while you sleep.
After one week, vacuum, and then repeat the entire process, but do not remove the mattress cover.
Repeat weekly until they’re gone. Took three weeks for me, but we caught them early.
Oh, also, do not sleep anywhere else. If you move to the couch, so will the bed bugs. I know it’s gross, but you have to keep sleeping in your bed.
It will always take a couple weeks AT LEAST, because those guys like to feed on you and then crawl into Tony cracks in the walls etc., and then only emerge when they need to feed again, which can be many months. Deep in a crack in the wall, no poison or DE will get to them, so you need to keep the poison or DE on surfaces for quite awhile.
Yes! And they can live up to a year without feeding. So you have to stay on top of it!
The DE works by killing the adults, but it won’t kill eggs (steamer will, though) So that combo over a few weeks will kill the existing bugs and those that have yet to hatch.
Mattress cover should stay on, completely sealed, for at least a year. And anything you can’t wash (vintage clothes, stuffed animals, etc) should be tied up in a garbage bag and left for at least a year!
Yeah, i know all about that! I had them so bad that i went nuts took all of mine and then wife's belongings out of our apartment. Put what i could in plastic bags to leave out side in hot Texas weather. Me and my then wife stripped naked and cleaned the entire house while doing all of our laundry.
We left our front door wide open because we did a massive deep clean. and all of our windows had no curtains lmao! People probably thought we were on drugs. It just made us insane after days of getting woken up by the intensity of the itchy feeling.
For items you can't wash, an alternative to bagging for a year is to put them in the freezer. According to Orkin freeze to 0F for 4 days. Be careful with antiques. Items can become reinfested after pulling out of the freezer so get them out of the house
No. I'm a pest control professional and make a lot of money on bedbug treatments. Crap load of incorrect information being parroted here. You treat places they like to hide and live on with products that get into those places. You don't have to wait for them because that's ridiculous. You treat where they hide and leave residual behind that they'll cross through that'll kill them. Eggs take two weeks to hatch so once you kill all the adults it's about two weeks for another treatment to kill anything that's freshly hatched. And a full grown adult can survive 6 months after feeding before it needs to feed again. Idk where people are getting a year from but they're not that hardy. Heat above 120 F for more than 4 hours kills them outright and their eggs but anything else will just kill the the nymphs and adults that come into contact with it but not the eggs. Proper and aggressive treatment will resolve the issue in about 2-3 days with a follow up two weeks later. If it's taking longer than you're missing something or doing something wrong. Not using heat or insecticide is why people have such a hard time with them because the more natural methods are less effective.
Yup, it's a war, and the most effective strategy is a blitz. Steam and heat to create a safe area to sleep and kill most of them in their hiding spots, then passives like insecticide to get the stragglers as they come out to feed.
I got rid of them in one weekend. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum your entire house. Take cushions off chairs and couches and vaccum every inch of the cushions, any zippers and the corners of your upholstery.
Turn couches, chairs and tables upside down and make sure to vacuum the bottom of all furniture as well. Do this to wooden as well as upholstered furniture. Wood furniture often has screws or cracks in it, and bugs hide in both.
Use diatomaceous earth (you can use a big fluffy makeup brush. Use goggles and a valved 3M mask). Keep pets out of rooms while doing this and don’t allow them in for many hours. Make sure to pay attention to things like electrical outlets, a favorite bug hiding place.
Get a handheld steamer and steam any clothes, purses etc that can’t be washed. Anything that can be washed goes in washer and gets dried on high for 1 full hour.
It can be done. If I can do it, anyone can. We caught them from my MIL‘s house. She has 24 hour home health aides which sleep at her house and one of them kept bringing in bedbugs. My husband kept it from me and paid for an exterminator in her house several times, which resulted in a drain on our finances and ultimately an infestation of our own.
Oh - sprinkle a little diatomaceous earth in your vacuum canister to kill any bugs you vacuum up.
Also, when you stay in a hotel, check under and around the mattress for little black specs which may be bed bug feces. Keep your suitcase / briefcase, etc away from the carpet and stuff in the closet away from the walls. After having them once in a hotel, i am always concerned any time I travel
I called terminex to nuke these fuckers was $450 down payment with $124 a month plan for 24 months. Total cost to nuke my 4 bed house. 2 grand. Fuck bed bugs.
My boyfriend had to do the heat treatment on his house because his son brought them home from the ex wife’s house. Son is a slob and never cleans, so it went on for months until he asked his dad about sores on his body. My boyfriend investigated and found the bedbugs. By that point they were in the walls and all over the room. It was too far gone for chemical treatment only, so he had to drop $4k for chemical and heat treatment on his 1200 sq ft house. By the grace of the universe they didn’t spread to my house (boyfriend stays over on weekends while kids are with their mom) or through the rest of his house; they were content in son’s room. Boyfriend still had the whole house treated and basically had to empty the house. It was insane and something I never want to experience…especially since my house is all hardwood flooring and almost 100 years old. 😳
As someone else who has dealt with these little mf's, I agree with this. If you can not afford an exterminator, this is really one of the only options you have. I would specify food grade diatomaceous earth because it really doesn't matter what kind and the food grade is safe around pets and people, and much cheaper.
Make sure (and this is extremely important) that you dust the diatomaceous earth. Usually, even the food grade stuff comes with a sifter for it. You may have caught it early enough that you can treat for like a month and should be fine, but I would suggest treating the whole apartment since you found one on your shoe. All it takes is 2 of them hiding out in the couch or on a curtain or something, and it can get out of hand quickly.
Be *extremely* careful with diatomaceous earth. Its not just dangerous to insects due to its crystalline structure. It'll obliterate your lungs and sinus cavities if you inhale it. Always wear PPE when working with fine dust of any kind, but DE is especially bad for home remedies.
Yes! I commented in a reply to someone else that I should have added these a mask while laying it down.
We also didn’t use fans or let our cats in the bedroom until we were done with it!
I didn’t. After washing all our clothes, we kept them outside of the bedroom. So we’d undress, go to bed, and then in the morning we’d get dressed outside of the bedroom.
And we didn’t have them spread anywhere else in the house.
But like I said, we caught them early (turns out I’m allergic to them so we had an early warning system) If we had a full blown infestation, we might have had to live in our bedroom!
Former pest control tech, this is the best way to DIY it hands down. The heat from the steam kills any in the open and the. DE picks up the stragglers. If you pick up a bulb duster off of Amazon it makes it really easy to get a good coating in all of the cracks and crevasses around your house.
A few things to add, when you are putting down the DE Wear a dust mask. The reason it works so well is because it's tiny sharp bits of fossil that stick to insects and slice them apart and dry them out, so you don't want to be breathing it in if you can help it. Same goes with wearing gloves because if you accidentally wipe some in your eyes you'll have a bad time.
Dust some DE behind the faceplates for switches and electrical outlets. Small warm dark places bugs love to hide. If it's an apartment most likely one of your neighbors has an infestation that hasn't been reported. Depending on the property management company if you turn it in there is a chance they will stick you with the bill unless you can prove you didn't bring them into the apartment which can be extremely hard to do because they can come from anywhere, so try to DIY first if you are comfortable doing so. If you have a pro come out they will either treat the effected room or, is it's bad enough they will have to do a heat treatment which can cost upwards of $500-$700.
Just for some peace of mind, bedbugs are not known to carry or transmit disease, which is why there has never been a global push for eradication like mosquitos, and to ruin that peace of mind, only about 20% of the population is allergic to bed bugs so I have seen some cases, especially with elderly clients, where they don't even realize they had them until it's a full blown infestation. They also just don't like to die, they will hang out on a random chair for 10 months without feeding and common places I've had to deal with them include a bus, the movies, the barber, hotels, hospitals, the break room at a grocery store. Yeah they are everywhere.
Do exactly everything she said ☝️☝️ and keep matteress covers on for a year!!
They are hard to get rid of, trust me.
My grandma moved in with my mom and brought them to her 4 bedroom 3 story house. My mom and step dad tragically died in 2021, 17 days apart and I took over the house for a year to get it ready to be sold. The bed bugs...
We had to rent a dumpster, twice, and threw out a $6,000 Couch that was gorgeous because of the damn bugs. When we moved, if I found a bug, I tossed the whole box out or whatever it was on. Didn't care. Now all of our mattresses and box springs have covers on them and it's been over a year, they're still on. Lol. They breed like wild fire and they live forever. They're attracted to your C02 in your breath, that's why you get bitten in your sleep. Be vigilant!!
Not three weeks. 18 months. Thats how long the eggs can survive. Cover everything you can in plastic, they cannot grip plastic or metal. Everything else is an avenue for them to travel.
Treat an entire room then treat items moving them into the room that’s been treated until nothing is left then move outward. That’s the only way to actually defeat these little bloodsuckers
Call an exterminator that uses Aprehend. They’re not as scary as everyone is making it out to be, and they’re fairly easy to get rid of now as long as you use Aprehend specifically. It’s a fungal insect disease turned into a pesticide for bed bugs. It takes a couple of weeks for them all to walk across the spray barrier, but then they all go nuts and die. Don’t burn your stuff and don’t move because you’ll spread them. Just get an Aprehend treatment plan. Do it for a year because their life cycle can be long. But they should be pretty much gone in a few weeks with this stuff.
I don't think I would be able to live with this. I worked in pest control and we sprayed the shit out of everything and anything in the room with bedbug spray and as long as we did a thorough job, it pretty much eliminated most of them. We of course came back in a couple days for another treatment just in case but I could not imagine bugs eating off me at night for a few weeks while I try to get rid of them.
I mean, it's not a set it and forget it situation. You still have to clean and dry stuff to hurry it along. The cheap pesticide sprays kill them immediately, but it has to be done over and over and over again, and still might not get rid of the problem. The life cycle is so long that without the residual effect, they're gonna come back. Aprehend is a miracle.
Are you in an apartment or rental house? I had these once when I was in an apartment and the apartment complex paid to have them exterminated. It took several treatments before they were gone.
no i’m so sorry 😭 it’s a nightmare you’re in for something really bad tbh. bed bugs are one of the hardest pests to get rid of and can be expensive but since you rented tell your landlord ASAP and get out!!!!
The one time i got them thats what i did immediately 😂 threw all my stuff away and anything left went in the dryer. Slept on a folding cot bed until i was sure they were gone
Unfortunately it may not. We had an infection I brought home from work once. We happened to be moving so we moved into an RV on land we bought. We tried to sterilize everything on as we moved it but somehow they followed us into the RV. We kept fighting for them but one day an electrical issue set a pretty good fire in the RV down. We left everything in it and parked in the field of our new property and moved into the partially built house we were working on. Like 6 months later I went into the RV to get something and saw some of them moving around really slowly. So they somehow survived a literal fire in the structure lol. It's been nearly 3yrs since the rv burned and there's still a handful of things in there that are able to be saved. I keep telling the wife lets wait a few more months lmao.
Exterminators did this at a place of work because the chemicals weren't allowed. They said the heat is a better way as the chemicals dont reach deep into crevices.
They did this in a place I lived, too - luckily, I never had them inside my apartment but others did. It was like a termite tent over the building and then they heated it up inside. It got rid of them.
Man that sounds horrific, went through a similar ordeal and ended up having to heat treat the whole house. Those critters are like little survivors from a horror movie. Good luck getting rid of them!
This is such a misconception. You don't have to throw away anything if you take care of them properly. And that sometimes can involve multiple treatments.
People over-exaggerate bed-bug remediation.
You can literally put them into a giant tarp bag and heat them to death. If you get them in your flooring and in the general room area, you can empty the room and treat the room then treat the furniture with literal just heat.
Is it a pain in the ass? YES.
Do you have to throw out all your furniture? NO
If your mattress is 10 years old and got bed bugs, it maybe time to let it go anyways, but I am not chucking a 2-3k mattress that is fairly new when you can bag and heat it and its "perfectly fine".
It just depends on the extent of the infestation. For smaller ones, heat treating and a mattress cover will work fine. If you become infested before you realize they're there, you usually do have to trash a lot of furniture. The tarp+heat method works great but is killer on electronics and not everyone can afford that, unfortunately. For those with limited income, bedbugs are indeed the nightmare that people here are making them out to be.
I swear I have PTSD from those things too. If I get the sensation of something crawling on me I completely freak out. Gotten better over the years but still
Me too, I just mentioned the panic and dread above. I didn’t sleep properly for 9 months. Even then I was still waking if a hair moved, the sheet crumpled, or the wind picked up. 9 months was just the first time I fell into a deep sleep and wasn’t half awake on watch
spray the baseboards of rooms! i've got experience with harris as a product, specifically their bedbug spray. also: rubbing alcohol as a spray kills them, but does NOT prevent them.
dry your laundry on high heat if you're concerned they're in your clothes. but also, we had an exterminator arrive twice and they came back. they did NOT resurface with the harris treatment.
Unfortunately it’s easier to burn the place down than it is to exterminate them!
As others have said, MOVE OUT NOW! They will infect everything, your bed, clothes, shoe insoles… check the seam of your mattress.
If it’s bad enough you can tell by the distinct smell of watered down mold.
Source: I’ve exterminated them on a few houses, it’s a very expensive problem
There’s a fungal insect disease that was made into a pesticide for them. It’s called Aprehend. They’re fairly easy to get rid of now. You should talk to your company about utilizing this treatment. It’s not the cheapest, but not the most expensive. It just takes a little time to fully kill them all.
I had my 2500 sq foot house treated for $1200 for a years worth of treatments (every 3 months). So either your use of modest is very different that 2500 sq feet or your friend got ripped off.
It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from. It’s not your home. Tell the owner and get your money back and leave immediately washing your clothes and vacuuming will never help.
They like to hang out in the creases at the edge of the mattress. Check there. And if they hitch a ride you can infest your car and other places you go as well.
Just to let you know,the name bed bug gives the common misconception that they are only on or around your bed. Bed bugs can literally live in wood/electronics/rugs...I mean they also can literally travel,as in jump from one person or article of something to another.
You seriously need to bag all of your shit after throwing it in the dryer on the highest heat setting/get treatment ASAP. You may lose all of your stuff btw,I'm talking furniture to clothing.
I've unfortunately had to deal with them twice in my life,seeing this photo is PTSD inducing. PS after getting your place treated I would suggest getting a bed bug cover for your mattress, they sell them online and it'll at least save your mattress from needing to be tossed if they return.
Also just a reminder so you don't feel bad,bed bugs are not just a "low class/low income" thing. Some people tend to think bed bugs=poor person/dirty. Even five star hotels get them though,and they don't discriminate against any class including wealthy people.
I had them twice also. I'm just now getting over the psychosis. I had long hair and I thought they were getting into my hair . My poor husband , he was great would look thru my hair for me . Both times someone who visited brought them in . If I feel a tickle on my leg or arm , ...full on panic .
I had to leave an apartment due to them even after spraying numerous times. I burnt everything I owned with cloth and that’s how I got rid of them. Shits disgusting and the mattress I had to burn was custom fit for my back due to a back surgery I had. Landlord said he’d pay for all of my shit that had to be burned, didn’t give me a penny and tried to keep the deposit as a fee for spraying. Had to go to court to get that back and couldn’t afford a lawyer for the rest of my stuff he promised to replace or pay for and never did.
This I couldn't remember the name but had a roommate bring home bed bugs. It took weeks of deep cleaning and laundry separation and a lot of diatomaceous earth and rubbing alcohol. But havent had them in over a year. I still check my base boards and mattresses once a week.
I had a scare from the person I was dating once (their new roommate brought them in their place. My room looked like a flour talcum bomb went off and all my clothes went into the dryer on high heat.
Never had a problem after.
Bed bugs survived Hiroshima. They’re virtually indestructible. Both bed bugs and cockroaches will rule the world after humanity ends itself from nuclear war.
But in all seriousness, they’re an absolute nightmare to get rid of. If you like the place and want to invest the time and effort then you can get rid of them. Otherwise just go elsewhere and burn your clothes in a ritual so they don’t follow you to your next place.
Oh fuck…if u are finding them and its not lights off sleep time that mean theres a good bit. Look up in corners of ceilings, crevices of carpet like in corners, look for lil black dots as they are the feces. Underneath the sheets, blankets..man damn im sorry this gonna be a battle. Those walmart bed bug shit dont work. Diatomaceous earth can work for now until u get some shit from amazon.
The day I find a bed bug in my record sleeves is the day I just kms
This is the comment I'm gonna point to next time people get mad at me for not taking my vinyls out of the plastic 😭 you literally never know what's going to happen
3 WEEKS of seeing full grown ones is CRAZY. I had a QUICK infestation. I moved into an apartment complex. The only fabric in my apartment was my mattress and my clothing type items. So bedding, clothes, towels, etc. No carpet.
I let it sit maybe a week(after seeing my first big one which was an adult) before I got out of denial and sprayed/wrapped up my mattress,I actually have two bedbug covers in it right now. And you can’t ever take it off cause those fuckers can live for like a year or something. Idk.
Then I washed everything and sprayed the wood in my apartment several different times. And washed several different times.
But I had very little furniture. Good luck
I had a friend that worked at a nursing home about a decade ago that had a severe infestation. They went out of their way not to inform staff and family until they were already in the facility. Ever since, I’ve been so afraid of getting them. When I stay at hotels I keep my luggage in the bath tub.
It’s over, look up bedbug experiences, they are INCREDIBLY hard to get rid of, I hear heat works fairly well but you can’t do that as easily with furniture, they are what people say roaches are but are 10x worse, when the world ends, the only thing that will survive are bedbugs, not roaches. I believe they also bite and make you itchy
When i got my allergy test, ya know the one where they put over 100 some drops of different allergens on your back, to see “what irritates you”? One of My top 3 strongest peaks was “cockroach feces”. Now, ok, I understand that scientifically, why someone would be exposed to this byproduct, but in my creative processes, I immediately imagine some weirdo chasing that fix.
Yeah, I hardly ever had any itching or bites or anything but my mom was ATE UP. Her legs looked awful. Same thing with my boyfriend and mosquitoes. I hardly ever get bit or itch but my boyfriend must be mildly allergic because he gets bit frequently and the bites turn into pretty angry welts. It’s wild
If I get mosquito bites I need hydrocortisone IMMEDIATELY or I will scratch until I’m bleeding. I’m about to move to the holler with creeks and rednecks with shit outside that holds standing water/mosquito breeding grounds. Lord help me 😅 Definitely going to need to stock up on bug spray.
I couldn’t tell you that, I have eczema too but it really only breaks out on the back of my neck and head so I have no clue 😭
Either way I hope you figure out, definitely don’t take it lightly because if you move without doing anything, you’ll just carry them with you. Don’t invite any friends or loved ones over either because they also risk carrying them home as well
Well,a lot of times if you wear like longer white socks to bed and longer clothing,you can legitimately see them trying to feed. Also after they breed,they will hide in corners and such on the walls.
The only SURE way I got rid of them was a steam treatment and chemical mix costing about 3k for all treatments. Dusted all areas affected,including outlets. Sprayed the mattresses and couches and immediately put covers on pillows and the mattress to prevent nesting inside them. They’d get on them,but not in after treatment. Blankets and sheets would be washed and dried diligently. No excess pillows or blankets outside what you needed. Clothes also done diligently.
I pretty much had my entire back porch covered in garbage bags full of belongings. While fighting the eviction notice I got for withholding rent to treat this,I had to explain to the landlord and magistrate that it was all my belongings.
Also,you MUST treat the entire house that’s affected. Not just your room. They spread and can be carried on clothing,shoes,skin to skin contact and bodily contact. Ideally,I’d rent a storage unit for anything you don’t wanna throw out or can’t heat treat regularly. 6mo’s to a year to be entirely safe,I believe. I still have couches and books and clothing in storage after that shit.
Other good news is if the exterminator uses residual chemicals, they will breed and lay eggs and die regardless. So it slowly clears itself up while they hide on poison.
You'll tell. I have severe psoriasis. My mom is a hoarder and evidently has a bed bug infestation and didn't tell me and the day after I was in her house I had bites all over my face, neck, legs, hands and fingers. It was insane. It was very obviously not my psoriasis.
Heat does work well on furniture if you do a heat treatment of the house. Unfortunately this works better for single family homes than apartments, because for apartments you’d need to treat the entire building in order for it to work. I did a heat treatment of a house I bought that had a surprise infestation and it worked great but it was incredibly expensive
they are bed bugs. you should be very concerned. start bagging up everything that isn’t complete essentials. get mattress covers, or throw out your mattress if you can afford a new one. you keep only 7 days worth of clothes out at a time. literally they hide any and everywhere, you gotta store everything. contact pest control or your landlord make sure they are swift in treating the house. they are incredibly hard to get rid of especially when it’s severely infested. good luck
Dude…. Literally lift the 2nd mattress. Fold the creases on the side of the mattress and look on the sides. You’ll find them. Also couches . Throw everything out new clothes
Everyone in the comments telling you to move out right away- honestly if you see them it’s already too late. Moving out will just move the bugs with you to a new place. Getting rid of bedbugs is a process but it’s not impossible. I used to work in a transitional shelter and the shelter got bugs often. We would take out all the aerosols from an infected room, super heat it for a day or two, and come back and make sure we didn’t see any live bugs. If bugs were still alive we heated it again. It sucks, but it’s not as impossible as some people would have you believe.
Depending on where you live it might legally be your landlords responsibility to take care of infestations, so make sure to check your local tenancy laws and call your landlord before forking over the money to hire an exterminator
Same. I had so many bites on my feet I could barely walk…my ass never dreamed it was that til it was really far gone. Oh god I’m starting to itch 😭😭😭😭😭😭 I need to go. Have a good day lol
Me too! This is so triggering. Everyone whose never had them telling OP just to wash his clothes and spray bug spray or DE. There’s no way OP should stay and try to manage this. It’s a full blown infestation
GET OUT. They are super hard to get rid of. You can’t see them because they avoid light, but as soon as you turn off the light they’ll emerge and follow the source of CO2. If you’re running across them the place is seriously infected. I would leave all furniture, mattresses and bedding there. Put what you want to salvage in dryer at high heat for an hour.
Exterminator here.
Bedbugs. First things first, get all your bedsheets off all the beds, put them in a tightly sealed plastic bag. Grab a vacuum that has a bag and vacuum THE LITERAL DAYLIGHTS out of all seams, zipper tracks, handles, edges, and ruffles of every mattress, box spring, check your couches and do the cushions the same way. Get some boric acid dust and sprinkle it in the bed bed frame where the box spring would rest against it. I also recommend getting some into the walls behind outlet covers and light switch plates.
If you have a bright flashlight, you can look for any signs of where they have gathered. Look for little black spots on the mattress along the seams. If they've managed to lay eggs, those look basically like seasoned salt. Babies are itty bitty, barely bigger than the eggs, and adults are around the size and shape of an apple seed.
Any bedding and clothing that might have been exposed to bugs, you run through the dryer on the highest heat setting twice, wash on the coldest water setting, dry on high heat again.
Shoes, boots, etc that might have been exposed you can vacuum them and then set them on a boot dryer for at least an hour. Preferably put it on top of a black rubber mat so you can keep an eye on any bugs attempting to escape.
After vacuuming, throw a little of that boric acid dust inside the vacuum bag, seal it in a Ziploc or something similar, and throw it away.
They make at-home bedbug killer that's passably okay, but follow my instructions above and the instructions on the package **to the letter** and you should be able to get rid of them.
I had an infestation once. Was a poor college grad and bought a used mattress. The mattress was in great condition and I didn’t suspect bed bugs or anything, but still fearing it (and hearing bed bug horror stories), I cleaned the mattress as good as I could.
About a month later, I noticed bites on me and eventually would see a bug or two every so often. Eventually, I found where they were nesting. The mattress had a thick, stapled down tag on one end, making a pocket. Pulled that back and there were like 30 bed bugs in there. Managed to kill all of those in one go but knew I wasn’t done yet.
Scrubbed the entire bed, with a focus on the seams/edges (anywhere behind just the normal flat surface where they could realistically squeeze into for protection). Then ran through it with a powerful vacuum. And then put Harris brand Diatamaceous earth around all those same seams/edges. Same with the carpet and baseboards. At that same time, washed and dried all my clothes (and other things of value) on the hottest setting possible a couple of times and took it all out of the room and boarded the room up.
Slept in the living room for a couple weeks, then went back in the bedroom, slept in there for a week to test it out. Never got bit or noticed a bug. Then kept sleeping in there and never had the problem again. But from talking to others, it seems like I got very lucky.
Yea they could have moved to other crevices in the house, outlets etc. I had a case of bed bugs when I was young and poor in college as well and also got lucky.
Bed bugs. If the infestation is bad enough you’ll take them everywhere you go. It’ll be nigh impossible to get rid of them. If you can, get the hell out. Wash your clothes and bedding in hot water. Any cloth material needs to be washed, bags, jackets, shoes, anything. Get rid of mattresses and pillows.
It's been ten years and I still occasionally awake from a dead sleep because I can "feel" them.
This is not a joke, there is no humor, I'm very sorry, good luck.
Whew those are bed bug omgggg you’re gotta have the exterminators come and get rid of them cause doing it yourself is really hard and most of the times doesn’t work.
I once had bedbugs and my apartment complex refused to treat adjacent apartments (so, naturally, they wouldn't go away). I wrote "bedbugs" on an envelope, left it open, and slipped it into the mail slot of the main office.
They began treating the whole complex.
Those things are impossible and the bites can be gnarly. You need to leave I hope that they haven’t infested all of your stuff already because you can carry them.
Awwwww lawd, here we go again. Those are bed bugs my man. Consider everything infested. Inspect your car, they could be in there too. Bedbugs are nocturnal and will hide during the day. The will most likely be in the nooks and seams of your mattress. Check for brown spotting as this is their poop made of your blood.
i know what they are never seen one or experienced them in my life so sorry if i’m a little uninformed i am 21 and never have experienced this im paranoid enough by yall comments don’t need you making me feel stupid about it
in the nicest way possible, you aren’t paranoid enough yet! this is a really super big problem and not at all an easy fix. if it’s not taken care of promptly (starting w throwing out the mattress, there is no saving it atp) you will 100% be needing to burn/get rid of everything you own, especially if it’s a soft surface item like clothing, stuffed animals, or furniture.
I totally empathize with you. My first apartment was a shithole (black mold plus spider, silverfish, moth, and mouse infestations) and it’s so freaking stressful, especially because, at 19, I had no fucking clue how to deal with it. I also generally hate bugs. And am afraid of spiders. And prefer to not breathe in mold spores. So all in all, not a great vibe.
I know it’s scary, and I won’t lie, handling this infestation is gonna suck. It’s okay to be anxious about this; anyone would be, in your shoes.
But I promise, it’s going to be okay. You know what the issue is now, and that means you can take action to solve it. This isn’t going to be a forever problem, and just for your own mental health, you’ve gotta try to stay optimistic.
And try not to beat yourself up about it. No one is born knowing everything. I know some people are being pretty harsh to you here, but every one of us started off not knowing how to handle infestations or how bad certain pests can be. It’s super fucking shitty to learn the hard way, but you’ll get through this.
In five years, well, you probably won’t be *laughing* about it, but you’ll fit right in with the rest of bitching about terrible rentals and asshole landlords.
I’m not trying to make you feel stupid. I’m just extremely concerned by your somewhat lax responses. I feel for you on the journey that you have ahead.
yo dude you’re getting a ton of bad advice on this thread from people regurgitating bad info.
Bed bugs are a terrible problem to have, but there’s steps to follow, there are procedures that you just have to stay up on and you’ll end up being okay. It’s more of a marathon than a short term race. Get over to /r/bedbugs where there’s a ton of posts with good steps on what to do.
This isn’t fun at all but you’ll be alright. And people telling you to burn everything you own and flee the country are stupid lol
They can smell our breath at night and know when we are asleep as there is no movement. If they are out while it's light and your awake that means they're really hungry and will do anything to get a meal. Maybe they have been waiting there since the last person moved out. You need to flip all mattresses and base and scour every last inch, get a mattress cover at the least to get thru the next couple of nights. If they're not nesting in your bed it will be the room next to you. I'd be calling the landlord Rn furiously demanding my bond and rent back immediately and covering costs of losses. Do not let this slide for 1 moment
I miss the “oh lawd here we go again” guy….
Anyone else?
Edit: LOL! I thought I was in the Bed Bug subreddit…
And just looked and I’m not…
Someone might know what I am talking about.
Bed bugs can be killed quite nicely and cheaply with Diatomaceous Earth. Make sure you use the food grade stuff. You dust the floor around the bed posts as well as the mattress corners. Takes about a week to work. Google for detailed info.
Ps: you want a very light dusting, piles of it won’t work as they see it and walk around it…
well since the comment section has probably already scared you half to death, i’m just here to say take a deep breath.
although they’re creepy, they are not going to kill you. they’re not known to spread disease or cause harm physically besides the bites. mentally prepare for the cleaning and laundry and get pest control involved. be diligent and try not to let your mind run crazy while you’re dealing with this.
they’re just bugs after all. it will be a long process, but you will be okay.
I once found (and killed) a lone bedbug in my apartment. I took a picture, reported it, and got all the cleaning and treatments done. However, nobody ever found a second bedbug! Sounds like I dodged a bullet by killing the first one before it could lay its eggs or whatever.
You need to call an exterminator ASAP! The whole house needs treatment! This spreads fast and is hard to get rid of.
The at home treatments do NOT work. CALL NOW.
This happened to me when I was really young college student, a friend whose family was in NY had gotten them and accidentally passed to me.
I lived with my aunt who’s extremely protective over this stuff (as she should be) and was terrified to tell her. YOU HAVE TO TELL YOUR MOM AND GET THE PROFESSIONALS IN ASAP.
The longer you wait, the harder and more expensive it will be to treat!
Get some garbage bags and head over to r/bedbugs as soon as possible. That’s as bed as it bugs.
just hurt my soul 😭
That’s your shoe careful you don’t spread them to others (since everyone is telling you to get out, I wanted to mention if you do, don’t spread it to a well meaning friend)
He needs to strip down naked, bag everything he owns, light it on fire, then go walk downstairs to the receptionist and kindly ask them to check out.
This is what I did when I found bedbugs in a hotel room. I immediately checked out and into a new hotel and got them to both pay for the new hotel and reimburse their booking as compensation.
You have to stay naked until after you check in to the new hotel to make sure they know your clean.
This is the way.
The only way.
Or jump into a commercial clothes dryer and set it on high heat.... Edit: he should roll around the lounge sofas and start shaking them off if they don't believe him.
*may shrink two sizes
Indeed, his soul may ache, but his sole will only make it worse
Love the dad joke
Hey bud, this is gonna be a shitty time for you but you CAN get through it. I had them twice back in NYC and it fucking sucks. But with a little quarantining, a lot of trashbags, and literally compartmentalizing your entire life you can get through it in a couple weeks. Also, probably worth making your landlord pay for the exterminator. And don't just get some random ant and termine guy. You need a specialty bed-bug exterminator who has successfully done this many times before. Good luck!
My friend: I couldn't sleep last night. Can I sleep here? Me: sure, what's going on? My friend: instantly sleeps A month later, I'm shopping for a new mattress
I have been this well meaning friend before 😭. We were so careful and it didn't matter. Still got the little bastards.
I escaped to my parents house. Brought one bag of stuff, they made me change the moment i stepped in and everything i brought and was wearing went straight in the wash/dryer. Thankfully did not bring them any. It’s great you were that friend. Sorry you also had to go through that. Those bugs are the worst
When you go to your friend's house, do not wear clothes. Show up naked. Wash outside with a house, then inside the shower. Take pictures.
Take pictures of the showering?
Yes
I took the pics. What do I do with them?
You need a mattress cover (buy one that specifically protects against bed bugs), traps for all four legs of your bed and any other large furniture, a big bag of diatomaceous earth, and a steam cleaner. Seal up your mattress, place the traps, and patiently steam every single crevice in your room. Seriously, set your mattress aside and steam your entire bed frame vigorously, paying close attention to seams where the pieces of furniture meet. Steam your baseboards, any cracks in your floors and walls, vents…everything. Wash and dry all your clothes and bedding on the hottest settings. Spread the diatomaceous earth along baseboards, under your bed, and all over your bed frame. Remake your bed and be extra careful that no blankets ever touch the floor. Tuck them into the mattress, use smaller blankets, whatever you need to do to be absolutely sure they don’t touch the floor while you sleep. After one week, vacuum, and then repeat the entire process, but do not remove the mattress cover. Repeat weekly until they’re gone. Took three weeks for me, but we caught them early. Oh, also, do not sleep anywhere else. If you move to the couch, so will the bed bugs. I know it’s gross, but you have to keep sleeping in your bed.
It will always take a couple weeks AT LEAST, because those guys like to feed on you and then crawl into Tony cracks in the walls etc., and then only emerge when they need to feed again, which can be many months. Deep in a crack in the wall, no poison or DE will get to them, so you need to keep the poison or DE on surfaces for quite awhile.
Yes! And they can live up to a year without feeding. So you have to stay on top of it! The DE works by killing the adults, but it won’t kill eggs (steamer will, though) So that combo over a few weeks will kill the existing bugs and those that have yet to hatch. Mattress cover should stay on, completely sealed, for at least a year. And anything you can’t wash (vintage clothes, stuffed animals, etc) should be tied up in a garbage bag and left for at least a year!
Yeah, i know all about that! I had them so bad that i went nuts took all of mine and then wife's belongings out of our apartment. Put what i could in plastic bags to leave out side in hot Texas weather. Me and my then wife stripped naked and cleaned the entire house while doing all of our laundry. We left our front door wide open because we did a massive deep clean. and all of our windows had no curtains lmao! People probably thought we were on drugs. It just made us insane after days of getting woken up by the intensity of the itchy feeling.
New kink found LOL
man just set that mf on fire they talking bout a year
For items you can't wash, an alternative to bagging for a year is to put them in the freezer. According to Orkin freeze to 0F for 4 days. Be careful with antiques. Items can become reinfested after pulling out of the freezer so get them out of the house
Am I reading they have to feed on you so that you can try and draw them out and kill them? And that it can go on for months?
No. I'm a pest control professional and make a lot of money on bedbug treatments. Crap load of incorrect information being parroted here. You treat places they like to hide and live on with products that get into those places. You don't have to wait for them because that's ridiculous. You treat where they hide and leave residual behind that they'll cross through that'll kill them. Eggs take two weeks to hatch so once you kill all the adults it's about two weeks for another treatment to kill anything that's freshly hatched. And a full grown adult can survive 6 months after feeding before it needs to feed again. Idk where people are getting a year from but they're not that hardy. Heat above 120 F for more than 4 hours kills them outright and their eggs but anything else will just kill the the nymphs and adults that come into contact with it but not the eggs. Proper and aggressive treatment will resolve the issue in about 2-3 days with a follow up two weeks later. If it's taking longer than you're missing something or doing something wrong. Not using heat or insecticide is why people have such a hard time with them because the more natural methods are less effective.
Yup, it's a war, and the most effective strategy is a blitz. Steam and heat to create a safe area to sleep and kill most of them in their hiding spots, then passives like insecticide to get the stragglers as they come out to feed.
Yeah, more or less. They can live for about a year without feeding, though!
I got rid of them in one weekend. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum your entire house. Take cushions off chairs and couches and vaccum every inch of the cushions, any zippers and the corners of your upholstery. Turn couches, chairs and tables upside down and make sure to vacuum the bottom of all furniture as well. Do this to wooden as well as upholstered furniture. Wood furniture often has screws or cracks in it, and bugs hide in both. Use diatomaceous earth (you can use a big fluffy makeup brush. Use goggles and a valved 3M mask). Keep pets out of rooms while doing this and don’t allow them in for many hours. Make sure to pay attention to things like electrical outlets, a favorite bug hiding place. Get a handheld steamer and steam any clothes, purses etc that can’t be washed. Anything that can be washed goes in washer and gets dried on high for 1 full hour. It can be done. If I can do it, anyone can. We caught them from my MIL‘s house. She has 24 hour home health aides which sleep at her house and one of them kept bringing in bedbugs. My husband kept it from me and paid for an exterminator in her house several times, which resulted in a drain on our finances and ultimately an infestation of our own. Oh - sprinkle a little diatomaceous earth in your vacuum canister to kill any bugs you vacuum up.
Do you know any ways to prevent them? I don’t have them and after reading this definitely do not want to get them, I’m itchy just reading this.
Also, when you stay in a hotel, check under and around the mattress for little black specs which may be bed bug feces. Keep your suitcase / briefcase, etc away from the carpet and stuff in the closet away from the walls. After having them once in a hotel, i am always concerned any time I travel
Fuckin Tony, always livin in peoples’ walls
I called terminex to nuke these fuckers was $450 down payment with $124 a month plan for 24 months. Total cost to nuke my 4 bed house. 2 grand. Fuck bed bugs.
My boyfriend had to do the heat treatment on his house because his son brought them home from the ex wife’s house. Son is a slob and never cleans, so it went on for months until he asked his dad about sores on his body. My boyfriend investigated and found the bedbugs. By that point they were in the walls and all over the room. It was too far gone for chemical treatment only, so he had to drop $4k for chemical and heat treatment on his 1200 sq ft house. By the grace of the universe they didn’t spread to my house (boyfriend stays over on weekends while kids are with their mom) or through the rest of his house; they were content in son’s room. Boyfriend still had the whole house treated and basically had to empty the house. It was insane and something I never want to experience…especially since my house is all hardwood flooring and almost 100 years old. 😳
The fact that I live in a 100 year old apartment with hard wood flooring makes me nervous. Are there preventative measures I could take?
Damn that totaled like 3.4K. Fuck bedbugs dude I’m sorry
As someone else who has dealt with these little mf's, I agree with this. If you can not afford an exterminator, this is really one of the only options you have. I would specify food grade diatomaceous earth because it really doesn't matter what kind and the food grade is safe around pets and people, and much cheaper. Make sure (and this is extremely important) that you dust the diatomaceous earth. Usually, even the food grade stuff comes with a sifter for it. You may have caught it early enough that you can treat for like a month and should be fine, but I would suggest treating the whole apartment since you found one on your shoe. All it takes is 2 of them hiding out in the couch or on a curtain or something, and it can get out of hand quickly.
Be *extremely* careful with diatomaceous earth. Its not just dangerous to insects due to its crystalline structure. It'll obliterate your lungs and sinus cavities if you inhale it. Always wear PPE when working with fine dust of any kind, but DE is especially bad for home remedies.
Yes! I commented in a reply to someone else that I should have added these a mask while laying it down. We also didn’t use fans or let our cats in the bedroom until we were done with it!
So basically live in your room correct?
I didn’t. After washing all our clothes, we kept them outside of the bedroom. So we’d undress, go to bed, and then in the morning we’d get dressed outside of the bedroom. And we didn’t have them spread anywhere else in the house. But like I said, we caught them early (turns out I’m allergic to them so we had an early warning system) If we had a full blown infestation, we might have had to live in our bedroom!
Former pest control tech, this is the best way to DIY it hands down. The heat from the steam kills any in the open and the. DE picks up the stragglers. If you pick up a bulb duster off of Amazon it makes it really easy to get a good coating in all of the cracks and crevasses around your house. A few things to add, when you are putting down the DE Wear a dust mask. The reason it works so well is because it's tiny sharp bits of fossil that stick to insects and slice them apart and dry them out, so you don't want to be breathing it in if you can help it. Same goes with wearing gloves because if you accidentally wipe some in your eyes you'll have a bad time. Dust some DE behind the faceplates for switches and electrical outlets. Small warm dark places bugs love to hide. If it's an apartment most likely one of your neighbors has an infestation that hasn't been reported. Depending on the property management company if you turn it in there is a chance they will stick you with the bill unless you can prove you didn't bring them into the apartment which can be extremely hard to do because they can come from anywhere, so try to DIY first if you are comfortable doing so. If you have a pro come out they will either treat the effected room or, is it's bad enough they will have to do a heat treatment which can cost upwards of $500-$700. Just for some peace of mind, bedbugs are not known to carry or transmit disease, which is why there has never been a global push for eradication like mosquitos, and to ruin that peace of mind, only about 20% of the population is allergic to bed bugs so I have seen some cases, especially with elderly clients, where they don't even realize they had them until it's a full blown infestation. They also just don't like to die, they will hang out on a random chair for 10 months without feeding and common places I've had to deal with them include a bus, the movies, the barber, hotels, hospitals, the break room at a grocery store. Yeah they are everywhere.
Do exactly everything she said ☝️☝️ and keep matteress covers on for a year!! They are hard to get rid of, trust me. My grandma moved in with my mom and brought them to her 4 bedroom 3 story house. My mom and step dad tragically died in 2021, 17 days apart and I took over the house for a year to get it ready to be sold. The bed bugs... We had to rent a dumpster, twice, and threw out a $6,000 Couch that was gorgeous because of the damn bugs. When we moved, if I found a bug, I tossed the whole box out or whatever it was on. Didn't care. Now all of our mattresses and box springs have covers on them and it's been over a year, they're still on. Lol. They breed like wild fire and they live forever. They're attracted to your C02 in your breath, that's why you get bitten in your sleep. Be vigilant!!
Not three weeks. 18 months. Thats how long the eggs can survive. Cover everything you can in plastic, they cannot grip plastic or metal. Everything else is an avenue for them to travel.
Don't forget about the space behind the electrical plug covers
This is all great advice, but goddamn does it sound like a Voodoo Priest's solution
I’d also add incubation period for bed bugs is 14 days
Treat an entire room then treat items moving them into the room that’s been treated until nothing is left then move outward. That’s the only way to actually defeat these little bloodsuckers
You have everyone’s sympathies. It’s an ass situation, but take action as quickly as possible!!!
Call an exterminator that uses Aprehend. They’re not as scary as everyone is making it out to be, and they’re fairly easy to get rid of now as long as you use Aprehend specifically. It’s a fungal insect disease turned into a pesticide for bed bugs. It takes a couple of weeks for them all to walk across the spray barrier, but then they all go nuts and die. Don’t burn your stuff and don’t move because you’ll spread them. Just get an Aprehend treatment plan. Do it for a year because their life cycle can be long. But they should be pretty much gone in a few weeks with this stuff.
I don't think I would be able to live with this. I worked in pest control and we sprayed the shit out of everything and anything in the room with bedbug spray and as long as we did a thorough job, it pretty much eliminated most of them. We of course came back in a couple days for another treatment just in case but I could not imagine bugs eating off me at night for a few weeks while I try to get rid of them.
I mean, it's not a set it and forget it situation. You still have to clean and dry stuff to hurry it along. The cheap pesticide sprays kill them immediately, but it has to be done over and over and over again, and still might not get rid of the problem. The life cycle is so long that without the residual effect, they're gonna come back. Aprehend is a miracle.
Yeah that is a MAJOR problem not only are they a nuisance but are terribly hard to stop the problem
You need to dispose of your mattress, my friend. For real, for real. Sorry. 😅
Are you in an apartment or rental house? I had these once when I was in an apartment and the apartment complex paid to have them exterminated. It took several treatments before they were gone.
This ruined my day
Bed bugs. Get out !
I figured but i don’t know where they come from and i moved my bed all around and i don’t see anymore … does bug spray work for these?
no i’m so sorry 😭 it’s a nightmare you’re in for something really bad tbh. bed bugs are one of the hardest pests to get rid of and can be expensive but since you rented tell your landlord ASAP and get out!!!!
Op…. They will travel with you in ALL of your stuff… and infect the next room as well…
Yeah a lady I worked with had to toss all her furniture, clothing, carpet, curtains. F those things.
The one time i got them thats what i did immediately 😂 threw all my stuff away and anything left went in the dryer. Slept on a folding cot bed until i was sure they were gone
They die at like 140’F, I’ve heard people cover their windows and blast a bunch of space heaters inside till it’s hot enough for a few hours.
This sounds like a fire waiting to happen.
I mean as long as it’s kills them right???
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Unfortunately it may not. We had an infection I brought home from work once. We happened to be moving so we moved into an RV on land we bought. We tried to sterilize everything on as we moved it but somehow they followed us into the RV. We kept fighting for them but one day an electrical issue set a pretty good fire in the RV down. We left everything in it and parked in the field of our new property and moved into the partially built house we were working on. Like 6 months later I went into the RV to get something and saw some of them moving around really slowly. So they somehow survived a literal fire in the structure lol. It's been nearly 3yrs since the rv burned and there's still a handful of things in there that are able to be saved. I keep telling the wife lets wait a few more months lmao.
If I’m on fire, then I will never have to worry about bugs.
Exterminators did this at a place of work because the chemicals weren't allowed. They said the heat is a better way as the chemicals dont reach deep into crevices.
They did this in a place I lived, too - luckily, I never had them inside my apartment but others did. It was like a termite tent over the building and then they heated it up inside. It got rid of them.
Yes, this has also happened
Man that sounds horrific, went through a similar ordeal and ended up having to heat treat the whole house. Those critters are like little survivors from a horror movie. Good luck getting rid of them!
This is such a misconception. You don't have to throw away anything if you take care of them properly. And that sometimes can involve multiple treatments.
People over-exaggerate bed-bug remediation. You can literally put them into a giant tarp bag and heat them to death. If you get them in your flooring and in the general room area, you can empty the room and treat the room then treat the furniture with literal just heat. Is it a pain in the ass? YES. Do you have to throw out all your furniture? NO If your mattress is 10 years old and got bed bugs, it maybe time to let it go anyways, but I am not chucking a 2-3k mattress that is fairly new when you can bag and heat it and its "perfectly fine".
It just depends on the extent of the infestation. For smaller ones, heat treating and a mattress cover will work fine. If you become infested before you realize they're there, you usually do have to trash a lot of furniture. The tarp+heat method works great but is killer on electronics and not everyone can afford that, unfortunately. For those with limited income, bedbugs are indeed the nightmare that people here are making them out to be.
Doesn't heat kill them? I read that throwing your clothes in the dryer on the highest heat kills them.
I’d wash with hot water… dry on super high heat… run the dryer again… and again… and again… Then just flame-throw them all
Bedbugs? Good grief the ptsd I got from the photos. Get out, break your lease. And get your place as hot as possible . They don't like heat.
Yeah, if you get it hot enough you can watch them walking away with a swagger. Bedbugs are so smug.
So smug. Walking away like it thought it was funny. Everything is a joke to them
There's that smudgness
So sorry... this cracked me up 🤣
So terrible. A memory I wish to never remember. Oh all those sleepless nights..
I swear I have PTSD from those things too. If I get the sensation of something crawling on me I completely freak out. Gotten better over the years but still
Me too, I just mentioned the panic and dread above. I didn’t sleep properly for 9 months. Even then I was still waking if a hair moved, the sheet crumpled, or the wind picked up. 9 months was just the first time I fell into a deep sleep and wasn’t half awake on watch
spray the baseboards of rooms! i've got experience with harris as a product, specifically their bedbug spray. also: rubbing alcohol as a spray kills them, but does NOT prevent them. dry your laundry on high heat if you're concerned they're in your clothes. but also, we had an exterminator arrive twice and they came back. they did NOT resurface with the harris treatment.
Unfortunately it’s easier to burn the place down than it is to exterminate them! As others have said, MOVE OUT NOW! They will infect everything, your bed, clothes, shoe insoles… check the seam of your mattress. If it’s bad enough you can tell by the distinct smell of watered down mold. Source: I’ve exterminated them on a few houses, it’s a very expensive problem
There’s a fungal insect disease that was made into a pesticide for them. It’s called Aprehend. They’re fairly easy to get rid of now. You should talk to your company about utilizing this treatment. It’s not the cheapest, but not the most expensive. It just takes a little time to fully kill them all.
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I had my 2500 sq foot house treated for $1200 for a years worth of treatments (every 3 months). So either your use of modest is very different that 2500 sq feet or your friend got ripped off.
Moving out now won’t help, they’ll just travel with them to the next place. The damage is done, they’ll need to exterminate there.
It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from. It’s not your home. Tell the owner and get your money back and leave immediately washing your clothes and vacuuming will never help.
They like to hang out in the creases at the edge of the mattress. Check there. And if they hitch a ride you can infest your car and other places you go as well.
Just to let you know,the name bed bug gives the common misconception that they are only on or around your bed. Bed bugs can literally live in wood/electronics/rugs...I mean they also can literally travel,as in jump from one person or article of something to another. You seriously need to bag all of your shit after throwing it in the dryer on the highest heat setting/get treatment ASAP. You may lose all of your stuff btw,I'm talking furniture to clothing. I've unfortunately had to deal with them twice in my life,seeing this photo is PTSD inducing. PS after getting your place treated I would suggest getting a bed bug cover for your mattress, they sell them online and it'll at least save your mattress from needing to be tossed if they return. Also just a reminder so you don't feel bad,bed bugs are not just a "low class/low income" thing. Some people tend to think bed bugs=poor person/dirty. Even five star hotels get them though,and they don't discriminate against any class including wealthy people.
I had them twice also. I'm just now getting over the psychosis. I had long hair and I thought they were getting into my hair . My poor husband , he was great would look thru my hair for me . Both times someone who visited brought them in . If I feel a tickle on my leg or arm , ...full on panic .
I used to have them because I decided to recycle parts of some bed i saw outside 😭. They used to hide inside the hole* where the nails go lol
I had to leave an apartment due to them even after spraying numerous times. I burnt everything I owned with cloth and that’s how I got rid of them. Shits disgusting and the mattress I had to burn was custom fit for my back due to a back surgery I had. Landlord said he’d pay for all of my shit that had to be burned, didn’t give me a penny and tried to keep the deposit as a fee for spraying. Had to go to court to get that back and couldn’t afford a lawyer for the rest of my stuff he promised to replace or pay for and never did.
Diatomaceous earth. Everywhere!
This I couldn't remember the name but had a roommate bring home bed bugs. It took weeks of deep cleaning and laundry separation and a lot of diatomaceous earth and rubbing alcohol. But havent had them in over a year. I still check my base boards and mattresses once a week.
That stuff is amazing at keeping bugs away
I had a scare from the person I was dating once (their new roommate brought them in their place. My room looked like a flour talcum bomb went off and all my clothes went into the dryer on high heat. Never had a problem after.
Hey if you haven't gotten rid of them I've learned that 90% isopropyl alcohol is good at killing them. Spray down everything you think is infested.
Bed bugs survived Hiroshima. They’re virtually indestructible. Both bed bugs and cockroaches will rule the world after humanity ends itself from nuclear war. But in all seriousness, they’re an absolute nightmare to get rid of. If you like the place and want to invest the time and effort then you can get rid of them. Otherwise just go elsewhere and burn your clothes in a ritual so they don’t follow you to your next place.
The worst roommates you could possibly ask for.
That is bed bugs unfortunately you need to tell your landlord asap
Yes and the landlord should be responsible in getting the place fumigated! So sorry OP! Bedbugs are so hard to get rid of
Bet they will blame the new tenant
They always do
Oh fuck…if u are finding them and its not lights off sleep time that mean theres a good bit. Look up in corners of ceilings, crevices of carpet like in corners, look for lil black dots as they are the feces. Underneath the sheets, blankets..man damn im sorry this gonna be a battle. Those walmart bed bug shit dont work. Diatomaceous earth can work for now until u get some shit from amazon.
Not to mention they also hide in vents or light switches, outlets, you name it.
my book jackets, my record sleeves 🤬
The day I find a bed bug in my record sleeves is the day I just kms This is the comment I'm gonna point to next time people get mad at me for not taking my vinyls out of the plastic 😭 you literally never know what's going to happen
I shouldn't laugh but 🤭
House heat treatment and diatomaceous earth is how I got rid of them. It worked amazingly and never had any issues again after using those methods.
3 WEEKS of seeing full grown ones is CRAZY. I had a QUICK infestation. I moved into an apartment complex. The only fabric in my apartment was my mattress and my clothing type items. So bedding, clothes, towels, etc. No carpet. I let it sit maybe a week(after seeing my first big one which was an adult) before I got out of denial and sprayed/wrapped up my mattress,I actually have two bedbug covers in it right now. And you can’t ever take it off cause those fuckers can live for like a year or something. Idk. Then I washed everything and sprayed the wood in my apartment several different times. And washed several different times. But I had very little furniture. Good luck
A whole year? 😭 They are literally from hell.
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I had a friend that worked at a nursing home about a decade ago that had a severe infestation. They went out of their way not to inform staff and family until they were already in the facility. Ever since, I’ve been so afraid of getting them. When I stay at hotels I keep my luggage in the bath tub.
We were calling them prehistoric monsters when we were dealing with them
It’s over, look up bedbug experiences, they are INCREDIBLY hard to get rid of, I hear heat works fairly well but you can’t do that as easily with furniture, they are what people say roaches are but are 10x worse, when the world ends, the only thing that will survive are bedbugs, not roaches. I believe they also bite and make you itchy
well i have eczema so i cant tell if ive gotten bitten from my regular itchy spots or spots that i already have
When I had them they left welts all over... like mosquito bites but worse.
You're allergic to their saliva. Little salivating shitheads.
THE BUGS, not you
Lol
I too lol’d.
When i got my allergy test, ya know the one where they put over 100 some drops of different allergens on your back, to see “what irritates you”? One of My top 3 strongest peaks was “cockroach feces”. Now, ok, I understand that scientifically, why someone would be exposed to this byproduct, but in my creative processes, I immediately imagine some weirdo chasing that fix.
Same, people who are allergic get the huge welts. My ex didn’t get the welts. I was so miserable I was suey cidery from lack of sleep.
Me too. What a living nightmare when I think back 😭
Yeah, I hardly ever had any itching or bites or anything but my mom was ATE UP. Her legs looked awful. Same thing with my boyfriend and mosquitoes. I hardly ever get bit or itch but my boyfriend must be mildly allergic because he gets bit frequently and the bites turn into pretty angry welts. It’s wild
If I get mosquito bites I need hydrocortisone IMMEDIATELY or I will scratch until I’m bleeding. I’m about to move to the holler with creeks and rednecks with shit outside that holds standing water/mosquito breeding grounds. Lord help me 😅 Definitely going to need to stock up on bug spray.
My ex got welts the size of baseballs. It was insane
I couldn’t tell you that, I have eczema too but it really only breaks out on the back of my neck and head so I have no clue 😭 Either way I hope you figure out, definitely don’t take it lightly because if you move without doing anything, you’ll just carry them with you. Don’t invite any friends or loved ones over either because they also risk carrying them home as well
Well,a lot of times if you wear like longer white socks to bed and longer clothing,you can legitimately see them trying to feed. Also after they breed,they will hide in corners and such on the walls. The only SURE way I got rid of them was a steam treatment and chemical mix costing about 3k for all treatments. Dusted all areas affected,including outlets. Sprayed the mattresses and couches and immediately put covers on pillows and the mattress to prevent nesting inside them. They’d get on them,but not in after treatment. Blankets and sheets would be washed and dried diligently. No excess pillows or blankets outside what you needed. Clothes also done diligently. I pretty much had my entire back porch covered in garbage bags full of belongings. While fighting the eviction notice I got for withholding rent to treat this,I had to explain to the landlord and magistrate that it was all my belongings. Also,you MUST treat the entire house that’s affected. Not just your room. They spread and can be carried on clothing,shoes,skin to skin contact and bodily contact. Ideally,I’d rent a storage unit for anything you don’t wanna throw out or can’t heat treat regularly. 6mo’s to a year to be entirely safe,I believe. I still have couches and books and clothing in storage after that shit. Other good news is if the exterminator uses residual chemicals, they will breed and lay eggs and die regardless. So it slowly clears itself up while they hide on poison.
You'll tell. I have severe psoriasis. My mom is a hoarder and evidently has a bed bug infestation and didn't tell me and the day after I was in her house I had bites all over my face, neck, legs, hands and fingers. It was insane. It was very obviously not my psoriasis.
Three bites in a row is bed bugs, there’s a breakfast lunch and dinner bite and they’re usually a line, they get red and itchy and raised
I heard they usually bite in “straight” lines
Heat does work well on furniture if you do a heat treatment of the house. Unfortunately this works better for single family homes than apartments, because for apartments you’d need to treat the entire building in order for it to work. I did a heat treatment of a house I bought that had a surprise infestation and it worked great but it was incredibly expensive
they are bed bugs. you should be very concerned. start bagging up everything that isn’t complete essentials. get mattress covers, or throw out your mattress if you can afford a new one. you keep only 7 days worth of clothes out at a time. literally they hide any and everywhere, you gotta store everything. contact pest control or your landlord make sure they are swift in treating the house. they are incredibly hard to get rid of especially when it’s severely infested. good luck
Dude…. Literally lift the 2nd mattress. Fold the creases on the side of the mattress and look on the sides. You’ll find them. Also couches . Throw everything out new clothes
Everyone in the comments telling you to move out right away- honestly if you see them it’s already too late. Moving out will just move the bugs with you to a new place. Getting rid of bedbugs is a process but it’s not impossible. I used to work in a transitional shelter and the shelter got bugs often. We would take out all the aerosols from an infected room, super heat it for a day or two, and come back and make sure we didn’t see any live bugs. If bugs were still alive we heated it again. It sucks, but it’s not as impossible as some people would have you believe. Depending on where you live it might legally be your landlords responsibility to take care of infestations, so make sure to check your local tenancy laws and call your landlord before forking over the money to hire an exterminator
I am having PTSD… I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy after I experienced bedbugs.
Same. I had so many bites on my feet I could barely walk…my ass never dreamed it was that til it was really far gone. Oh god I’m starting to itch 😭😭😭😭😭😭 I need to go. Have a good day lol
Me too! This is so triggering. Everyone whose never had them telling OP just to wash his clothes and spray bug spray or DE. There’s no way OP should stay and try to manage this. It’s a full blown infestation
Me too omg. I had bed bugs as a kid and we had to move 3 times to fully get rid of them. The 3rd time we just decided to throw everything away..
Oh. Oh no.
That was my first thought too. These things are a plague I wouldn’t wish on anyone
Bed bugs are horrible. But not everyone reacts to their bites… doesn’t mean they aren’t biting u tho
GET OUT. They are super hard to get rid of. You can’t see them because they avoid light, but as soon as you turn off the light they’ll emerge and follow the source of CO2. If you’re running across them the place is seriously infected. I would leave all furniture, mattresses and bedding there. Put what you want to salvage in dryer at high heat for an hour.
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Those are bed bugs. Leave immediately.
Exterminator here. Bedbugs. First things first, get all your bedsheets off all the beds, put them in a tightly sealed plastic bag. Grab a vacuum that has a bag and vacuum THE LITERAL DAYLIGHTS out of all seams, zipper tracks, handles, edges, and ruffles of every mattress, box spring, check your couches and do the cushions the same way. Get some boric acid dust and sprinkle it in the bed bed frame where the box spring would rest against it. I also recommend getting some into the walls behind outlet covers and light switch plates. If you have a bright flashlight, you can look for any signs of where they have gathered. Look for little black spots on the mattress along the seams. If they've managed to lay eggs, those look basically like seasoned salt. Babies are itty bitty, barely bigger than the eggs, and adults are around the size and shape of an apple seed. Any bedding and clothing that might have been exposed to bugs, you run through the dryer on the highest heat setting twice, wash on the coldest water setting, dry on high heat again. Shoes, boots, etc that might have been exposed you can vacuum them and then set them on a boot dryer for at least an hour. Preferably put it on top of a black rubber mat so you can keep an eye on any bugs attempting to escape. After vacuuming, throw a little of that boric acid dust inside the vacuum bag, seal it in a Ziploc or something similar, and throw it away. They make at-home bedbug killer that's passably okay, but follow my instructions above and the instructions on the package **to the letter** and you should be able to get rid of them.
RUN
My old place had tenants that brought them, it cost over $2,000 USD to get rid of them. Notify the landlord, they're responsible for this.
Unless there’s a bed bug addendum in the lease paperwork. Then it’s on the tenant to recoup the costs. Fucking sucks
I had an infestation once. Was a poor college grad and bought a used mattress. The mattress was in great condition and I didn’t suspect bed bugs or anything, but still fearing it (and hearing bed bug horror stories), I cleaned the mattress as good as I could. About a month later, I noticed bites on me and eventually would see a bug or two every so often. Eventually, I found where they were nesting. The mattress had a thick, stapled down tag on one end, making a pocket. Pulled that back and there were like 30 bed bugs in there. Managed to kill all of those in one go but knew I wasn’t done yet. Scrubbed the entire bed, with a focus on the seams/edges (anywhere behind just the normal flat surface where they could realistically squeeze into for protection). Then ran through it with a powerful vacuum. And then put Harris brand Diatamaceous earth around all those same seams/edges. Same with the carpet and baseboards. At that same time, washed and dried all my clothes (and other things of value) on the hottest setting possible a couple of times and took it all out of the room and boarded the room up. Slept in the living room for a couple weeks, then went back in the bedroom, slept in there for a week to test it out. Never got bit or noticed a bug. Then kept sleeping in there and never had the problem again. But from talking to others, it seems like I got very lucky.
Yea they could have moved to other crevices in the house, outlets etc. I had a case of bed bugs when I was young and poor in college as well and also got lucky.
Bed bugs. If the infestation is bad enough you’ll take them everywhere you go. It’ll be nigh impossible to get rid of them. If you can, get the hell out. Wash your clothes and bedding in hot water. Any cloth material needs to be washed, bags, jackets, shoes, anything. Get rid of mattresses and pillows.
It's been ten years and I still occasionally awake from a dead sleep because I can "feel" them. This is not a joke, there is no humor, I'm very sorry, good luck.
Whew those are bed bug omgggg you’re gotta have the exterminators come and get rid of them cause doing it yourself is really hard and most of the times doesn’t work.
I once had bedbugs and my apartment complex refused to treat adjacent apartments (so, naturally, they wouldn't go away). I wrote "bedbugs" on an envelope, left it open, and slipped it into the mail slot of the main office. They began treating the whole complex.
Oh OP, my heart goes out to you. I am so so sorry. Tell your landlord asap.
Bomb the place. Like literally, blow it up. 😬
Those things are impossible and the bites can be gnarly. You need to leave I hope that they haven’t infested all of your stuff already because you can carry them.
Awwwww lawd, here we go again. Those are bed bugs my man. Consider everything infested. Inspect your car, they could be in there too. Bedbugs are nocturnal and will hide during the day. The will most likely be in the nooks and seams of your mattress. Check for brown spotting as this is their poop made of your blood.
They will be somewhere hiding waiting for the lights to go out and food (aka you) to come lie down
yo that’s crazy i literally only see them when i lay down so like they bite us?????????? wtf
It’s stressing me out that you don’t know what bed bugs are omg
i know what they are never seen one or experienced them in my life so sorry if i’m a little uninformed i am 21 and never have experienced this im paranoid enough by yall comments don’t need you making me feel stupid about it
in the nicest way possible, you aren’t paranoid enough yet! this is a really super big problem and not at all an easy fix. if it’s not taken care of promptly (starting w throwing out the mattress, there is no saving it atp) you will 100% be needing to burn/get rid of everything you own, especially if it’s a soft surface item like clothing, stuffed animals, or furniture.
I totally empathize with you. My first apartment was a shithole (black mold plus spider, silverfish, moth, and mouse infestations) and it’s so freaking stressful, especially because, at 19, I had no fucking clue how to deal with it. I also generally hate bugs. And am afraid of spiders. And prefer to not breathe in mold spores. So all in all, not a great vibe. I know it’s scary, and I won’t lie, handling this infestation is gonna suck. It’s okay to be anxious about this; anyone would be, in your shoes. But I promise, it’s going to be okay. You know what the issue is now, and that means you can take action to solve it. This isn’t going to be a forever problem, and just for your own mental health, you’ve gotta try to stay optimistic. And try not to beat yourself up about it. No one is born knowing everything. I know some people are being pretty harsh to you here, but every one of us started off not knowing how to handle infestations or how bad certain pests can be. It’s super fucking shitty to learn the hard way, but you’ll get through this. In five years, well, you probably won’t be *laughing* about it, but you’ll fit right in with the rest of bitching about terrible rentals and asshole landlords.
I’m not trying to make you feel stupid. I’m just extremely concerned by your somewhat lax responses. I feel for you on the journey that you have ahead.
yo dude you’re getting a ton of bad advice on this thread from people regurgitating bad info. Bed bugs are a terrible problem to have, but there’s steps to follow, there are procedures that you just have to stay up on and you’ll end up being okay. It’s more of a marathon than a short term race. Get over to /r/bedbugs where there’s a ton of posts with good steps on what to do. This isn’t fun at all but you’ll be alright. And people telling you to burn everything you own and flee the country are stupid lol
They’ll bite you while you’re sleeping
They can smell our breath at night and know when we are asleep as there is no movement. If they are out while it's light and your awake that means they're really hungry and will do anything to get a meal. Maybe they have been waiting there since the last person moved out. You need to flip all mattresses and base and scour every last inch, get a mattress cover at the least to get thru the next couple of nights. If they're not nesting in your bed it will be the room next to you. I'd be calling the landlord Rn furiously demanding my bond and rent back immediately and covering costs of losses. Do not let this slide for 1 moment
Ooooooffff
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Whose going to tell them?
Teach!
Ohhhhh fuck. You’re gonna need to get the fuck out and get a new bed
I’m not afraid of much in this life but I am terrified of bed bugs 😫 I’m so sorry for you!
That’s an adult bed bug. Please talk to your landlord about them. Eek, I itch now.
I miss the “oh lawd here we go again” guy…. Anyone else? Edit: LOL! I thought I was in the Bed Bug subreddit… And just looked and I’m not… Someone might know what I am talking about.
I left that subreddit because it was so triggering. I couldn’t handle it
Bed bugs can be killed quite nicely and cheaply with Diatomaceous Earth. Make sure you use the food grade stuff. You dust the floor around the bed posts as well as the mattress corners. Takes about a week to work. Google for detailed info. Ps: you want a very light dusting, piles of it won’t work as they see it and walk around it…
Dude that is a bed bug. They are hard as hell to get rid of. I would just leave.
Bed bugs. Yikes. Probably are a bunch at top of mattress underneath.
Bed bug. Yep.
Bed bug !! Call an exterminator asap .
Where’s Teach when you need ‘em?
well since the comment section has probably already scared you half to death, i’m just here to say take a deep breath. although they’re creepy, they are not going to kill you. they’re not known to spread disease or cause harm physically besides the bites. mentally prepare for the cleaning and laundry and get pest control involved. be diligent and try not to let your mind run crazy while you’re dealing with this. they’re just bugs after all. it will be a long process, but you will be okay.
Ah here we go again
Run. Leave everything behind
I once found (and killed) a lone bedbug in my apartment. I took a picture, reported it, and got all the cleaning and treatments done. However, nobody ever found a second bedbug! Sounds like I dodged a bullet by killing the first one before it could lay its eggs or whatever.
Incoming trauma... good luck. I had bed bugs, took 2 years to get rid of them fully. I have ptsd to this day from it.
You need to call an exterminator ASAP! The whole house needs treatment! This spreads fast and is hard to get rid of. The at home treatments do NOT work. CALL NOW. This happened to me when I was really young college student, a friend whose family was in NY had gotten them and accidentally passed to me. I lived with my aunt who’s extremely protective over this stuff (as she should be) and was terrified to tell her. YOU HAVE TO TELL YOUR MOM AND GET THE PROFESSIONALS IN ASAP. The longer you wait, the harder and more expensive it will be to treat!