Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite
I owe you fair warning that this post might give you the willies. It’s a horror story from my renter days that I wanted to share in hopes that it may help someone experiencing something similar.
When I made my post-graduation move to New York City in June 2004, I rented a two-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens with a college roommate. It was less than nice, but my roomie and I were just happy to find a place with big bedrooms with cheap rent. All in all, it seemed like the perfect place to cram with my seen-better-days IKEA furniture, “decorate” with cheap posters and kick off life as an adult. Little did I know I’d actually end up living like this:
But let’s start at the beginning. I randomly woke up in the middle of one August night and headed to the kitchen for some water. I turned on the light and immediately noticed a small, brown bug sitting on my shoulder. As I turned my head to flick it away I saw several more crawling down my back. Naturally, I got some major heebie-jeebies and ripped my shirt off so fast you would’ve thought it was on fire.
I darted back to my room, figuring I’d accidentally left my window cracked and let some flies or gnats creep in. When I turned on the light I saw two things: (1) closed windows and (2) several dozen bugs swarming my bed and the surrounding walls. Gross, gross, gross.
I started to kill the ones I could catch, but quickly realized they were appearing faster than I could squash them. I turned to my next best defense: the Internet. Some quick Googling revealed that I had a bed bug infestation (I know what you’re thinking – ewwww)
Bed bugs are very real. They’re small (pencil eraser sized) flat insects that are nocturnal and feed on warm-blooded creatures, which certainly explains their love of sleeping humans. It’s rare that you catch them in action like I did, so most people detect an infestation from the bites they find on their skin. Both my roommate and I had lots of those (she even had one on her eyelid) but made the common mistake of assuming they were just mosquito bites. You can also look for stains on your bedding: both their droppings (small black dots usually at the edges of your mattress) and blood stains (when you roll over and “pop” one that just drank). Gross, I know.
So how did we get bed bugs? They’ve been making a resurgence in the US lately, especially in big, transient cities like New York. Despite popular belief, an infestation isn’t an indication of filth, but rather a a result of increased international travel (frequently found in hotels, bed bugs come home on your suitcases and clothes) and decreased use of DDT in pesticides (assuming they were mostly gone, people stopped making chemicals to kill them). How they made it to our apartment? No one really knows- except that our wall-to-wall carpet surely didn’t help.
Unfortunately, bed bugs are notoriously hard to get rid of. We were told it often requires multiple applications of a pesticide to ensure the problem is gone. Our (somewhat shady) landlord was too cheap to call a professional, so he hired a friend to spray our place with some mystery chemical in all the cracks and crevices around our apartment (this involved dismantling all of our IKEA furniture- bed bugs love dowel holes!).
In addition to the pesticide treatment (which I will admit wasn’t very green at all- but we were getting eaten by bugs at night and our landlord wore the pants), my roommate and I had to take several steps to help ensure that we quarantined any of the bugs that miraculously escaped the chemical treatment. This involved washing all fabrics in hot water (keep in mind this meant lugging ALL of our clothes, sheets, and towels two blocks to a laundromat) and then storing them in plastic for 2 months. Bed bugs apparently have trouble walking on slick surfaces like plastic or metal, so keeping everything in trash bags helped keep them from stowing away anywhere new. So that’s why my closet looked like this for 8 weeks:
And since the bugs could still be living deep inside our mattresses, we were advised to buy plastic mattress covers (with zippers!) and leave them on until we could afford new beds. And since checking for bite marks in the morning was the the only way to tell if the problem was solved, we had several unsettling nights where we basically “sacrificed” our bodies to be sucked on for the sake of seeing if they were gone. Here’s a pic of me before bed one night on my sheet-less, plastic-covered bed. Despite it being summer, I covered myself in as much clothing as possible to limit my bite count. Oh, and that annoyed look is 100% intentional too.
After a couple of weeks of biteless nights, we officially declared ourselves in the clear. In the end, it had been about a 12 week ordeal. I’m usually not one to freak out about bugs, but these suckers (literally) caused an insane amount of distress – from arguing with our landlord over who was responsible for treatment to eventually replacing every piece of furniture I owned (not ’til I moved out, mind you). I truly wouldn’t wish bed bugs on anyone.
But bed bugs aren’t the end of the world. If you find yourself infested, do your research, rely on professionals and brace yourself for a few weeks of uncomfortable living. Hopefully in the 4+ years since my ordeal their treatment methods have improved. The best treatment for bed bugs is obviously prevention. When traveling, check hotel mattresses for stains and keep your suitcase off the floor. At home, keep your carpets vacuumed and if you think you’re at risk for an infestation (lots of globetrotting guests, for instance) think about coating the feet of your bed in Vaseline or sitting them in a tin can so the bugs can’t travel from the floor to the mattress (bed bugs can’t fly, so as long as things are slippery they won’t be able to bridge that gap).
Hopefully this long post hasn’t put you to sleep. But if it did, I’ll hope you slept tight and didn’t let the… well, you know the rest.
Learn more about bed bugs here and here.
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I’m originally from Astoria, Queens!
I dealt with bed bugs in an apartment I had a year ago. Besides the mattress covers, I found that my hair dyer helped solve the problem. Heat is one thing that kills bed bugs, so using a hair dryer all around your mattress helps kill not only the bugs, but the eggs that are in your mattress, box spring, etc. Just an extra tip: check your mattress covers frequently! As much as I tried to keep my cats out of my bedroom, they still managed to get in and tear holes in the covers.
For peace of mind (once an exterminator told me that the bugs were just in the bedroom) I took all of my clothes out and washed them as well as my blankets. I closed the door and put plastic underneath it in hopes of confining the bugs to one area. I bought a cheap cot from Dick’s Sporting Goods and slept on that for a few weeks (in my living room). Knowing the bugs couldn’t get up the legs of the cot helped me to sleep somewhat.
EEK! I am always paranoid of them when I travel and stay in hotels and on cruise ships, even if they are top-notch. I have never experienced them thankfully. The first thing I do before unpacking any bags is to check the mattress and headboard for any visible signs. At least this way you have a chance to flee relatively unscathed. While in Greece this summer I noticed a girl from the UK with bite marks all over her arms and legs and she was scratching them while at the beach. I wondered if she had stayed at a hostel or got them from a bad cruise ship. Poor girl!
My hubby was watching a program about them and second hand clothing stores and furniture are a big culprit. The show also mentioned how even hugging someone that has them on their clothing can allow them to be transferred to you. The whole thing creeps me out. I’m sorry you all had to endure that! How awful.
This post creeped me out! Now I’m going to be paranoid whenever I travel and will have to remember to check the mattresses! Eek!
I am so stressed out due to the chaos these bugs have caused me. I can’t sleep or eat. My place is a mess with plastic bags everywhere. I threw out most of my furniture. I don’t have enough time in the day to do amount of laundry that is involved for me and my kids.
i hate bb’s
Ok, so we don’t have bedbugs, but upon going into our new home (not new though- 60 years old) when we closed, my husband and I found FLEAS all over our clothes, just from sitting on the floor in the guest bedroom…how disgusting is that! These people were living in a house infested with fleas (and they only had 1 dog and 1 cat)! Now I have several little bites on my feet and ankles=(
How do we get rid of them? I am hoping ripping up all the carpet to refinish the hardwood floors will do the majority of that.
Hey Megan,
Yikes! We don’t have any experience with this, but instead of immediately using chemicals to bomb your house I would first rip up all the carpets you plan to remove since it stands to reason (from your experience with the clothes on the floor and your ankle bites) that they’re living in the carpets. Perhaps once you get the carpets up you can google “natural flea remedies” or “remove fleas naturally” to see if there’s some spray or soap you can create (maybe even with household supplies like vinegar or baking soda) that you can use to wipe down the wood floors and any other areas that seem infested. There are probably pest control books that cover getting rid of fleas at the library too so that’s another free way to try to solve the problem yourself. We hope it helps!
xo,
s
OMG! It’s 1am here, but I’m too scared to go to bed!!
for fleas you can use Mule Team borax…those little rascals get in it and never get out. Also, if you have animals, and they are outside sometimes, the price of a vet recommended flea treatment (not found at walmart) is workth it’s weight in eliminating this problem.
I’m a Richmond native living in the big apple now with my beau and we are unfortunately dealing with bedbugs right now. Our old apartment was completely infested, so of course we moved immediately, threw out most of our furniture and spent countless hours and dollars at the laundrymat/dry cleaners. Unfortunately, we moved into a beautiful new apartment building and were not as careful as we thought during the big move. Almost immediately we started seeing spots on our sheets again and I’m not gonna lie, came very close to a mental breakdown. We’re now living out of plastic and praying everyday that we will be successful in getting rid of them for good. Thank you for posting this, it’s good to see that people DO survive bedbugs! When you’re in the throws of it, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel!!
RIC/NYC love,
Rachel & Sean
Great Story thanks John
Thanks for your article. My parents-in-law picked up a couch that someone was getting rid of and it ended up upstairs in our apartment. (they live in the basement) Last night my husband woke up and left our bed to go sleep on the ‘new’ couch because the baby kept waking up crying. I heard him arguing with his Mom at 7am telling her to tell me. I woke up and asked what was going on….he had his clothes off and showed me his back and said the couch had bed bugs!!!! I was and am so distraught :( We had some other people living in the basement a few months ago and they brought cockroaches in and now this! I’m crying my eyes out and having been bagging up clothes, bedding, toys, etc all morning. I don’t know if they could have spread to everything that fast? The couch came in our house last night and we got rid of all fabric furniture this morning. I’m so upset and we cant really afford to pay for an exterminator and now we have to get new furniture once we know there are no bedbugs in the house. We also rent our home and I am so scared to tell the landlord because this problem would be our fault not the old tenents. I have been sweeping, mopping, vaccuming, and washing in hot water all morning and am so afraid :( My husband sat on the couch last night then layed down with my daughter last night but she doesn’t have any bite marks. I’m itchy as f*** but think it’s just from thinking about it. When will I know if they spread or not?????? :( :( :( I HATE BUGS!!!!!!!!!!!
Unfortunately you’ll just have to wait it out (it’s impossible to know if they’re spreading or if you’ve gotten rid of them for at least a few weeks or even a month). But it’s a great sign if you notice less bug bites and see less evidence of them over the next ten days or so. Our fingers are crossed for you!
xo,
s
Julie:
I have been through this bed bug ordeal and have finally gotten rid of the pests after about 5 months. The good news is that you found them fast enough. It’s actually good that your husband went and slept on the couch, because hungry bed bugs have been known to travel rooms for a ‘meal’. So he sacrificed himself so they will hopefully stay on the couch! Bed bugs are lazy, they will go the LEAST distance possible. (Which is why if you know you went to sleep a certain way and don’t move at all during the night, you can pretty much discern what area the infestation is coming from).
I’d wash everything in the vicinity in hot water. If something can’t go in hot water, then throw it in the dryer for 15-20 minutes. All it takes to kill one is direct contact with over 110 degrees heat. Another good idea is to steam clean everything around the couch. The heat from the steam cleaner will get rid of any bugs on contact.
As a prevention measure (to ensure they don’t get in your bed), move your bed at least 2 feets from any wall, and put vaseline where your bed posts meet the floor. Most nymphs (adult bed bugs) will either not be able to crawl or get stuck. Make certain that your covers, blankets, etc don’t touch the floor. Bed bugs can crawl up blankets that are touching the ground, or can crawl up walls to get onto a bed that’s touching a wall.
I can’t stop itching!!
They are the worst. My old apartment had them. Luckily I was able to move out and stay with my parents until I found a new place, only later to discover they had a slight infestation before I got there. They didn’t even know, they are both older and have relatively bad eyesight.
I am moving again, no furniture. Just clothes.
THESE THINGS ARE THE WORSE!
I am living the worst beg bug nightmare of them all. I have been battling with bed bugs for almost 2 years!!! We had original infestation in one bedroom, and made the mistake of getting only that room exterminated. 3 months later we discovered every room in the house had evidence of bedbugs. We bought new beds for everyone, new living room furniture. Spent almost $7000 in exterminators and new furniture. We thought after 10 months that we were rid of them. 2 months ago we discovered my daughters boxspring was completly infested with bedbugs. We called exterminator again and had the entire house sprayed 3 times!!!! Guess what, it is 2 months later and last weeknd I saw a bedbug crawling on my shirt in my living room! We did everything right, washed all of our clothes, bagged everything we owned. We have bedbug interceptors on the feet of every bed. Yet we cannot get rid of these demons. I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown . We want to sell our house but how can we in good conscience do that to someone else? Everyone should know that adult bedbugs can live up to 2 years without a bloodmeal so if even one gets away from the exterminator and hides it can cause a reinfestation. We don’t even know how we got them in the first place but it has ruined our lives and I feel like this nightmare will never come to an end.
Oh no, we’re so sorry to hear about your bed bug nightmare. We’re sending you good thoughts and we hope that you get those buggers this time and they’re finally gone for good.
xo,
s
I live in Iceland and we have bedbugs here of course to. I worked in a hotel that had a whole room infested with bed bugs. The exterminator we called had years of experience with dealing with bg and he freezes them with a special equipment so they die. Says that that is almost the only way to kill the ones you can’t get rid of with washing clothes, f.e. in shoes. Unfortunately we had to throw away everything in the hotelroom and even take down a wall and the electricity had to go as well. It was a nightmare that I still deal with. I examine our beds reqularly and when travelling anywhere the suitcases stay outside the room until after inspection. A warning for travellers is that it does not matter how many stars the hotel has, the bb don´t care and they can very easily escape the eyes of the cleaners. The young ones are almost invisible and very hard to see.
I think I would need to check myself into a mental institution if I get these bugs home. They leave a mark on you.
This post is now a couple of years old, but I wanted to share my own bedbug horror story for anyone else who is reading this post now or experiencing a similar problem.
I am a renter, and due to what I believe was the use of sub-par contractors by my apartment administration, my bedbug problem lasted on and off for nearly 2.5 years. Not the most pleasant period of my life. But in the process I learned a lot.
The most important lesson is that bedbugs are incredibly resilient little stinkers. While pesticides will kill most of them, many have developed immunities to chemicals. And the ones that don’t die will reproduce and create more chemical-immune bugs, and they’ll create more, etc, etc, until the end of time. While some people have success with chemicals (particularly repeated fumigations), the only guaranteed way to kill them is with heat. Many companies now use a method by which they heat your space to 115 degrees for a relatively short amount of time, and ta da!, no more bugs. However, you have to be careful to do this process correctly because any sort of tight space, such as books crammed in bookcases or clothes crammed in a closet/drawer, will create an insulating protection zone where any bugs hiding out will be safe from the high temperatures. (This now-obvious caveat to the heat method was never mentioned by the first extermination company hired by my apartment complex, which is most likely why my situation wasn’t resolved more efficiently). But this problem is somewhat easily solved by putting clothes/bedding in the dryer for 15-20 minutes and removing/checking books for bugs.
It is also incredibly important to check/clean any item brought home from a flea market/vintage store/Craigslist. Prevention is so much easier than extermination.
Finally, as mentioned in the post, I found it important to remember that a bedbug infestation does not mean that someone is filthy or maintains an unclean home. Due to the factors cited in the post, they have become a widespread problem, particularly in urban areas and apartment buildings where tenants more in and out frequently. Bedbugs are gross enough as it is – there’s no need to attach a feeling of shame to an infestation that in no way reflects upon one’s lifestyle.
Wow. My roommate and I got bedbugs last September and it took 6+ months to get rid of them. 8 chemical treatments, 2 heat treatments, and 3 months of living out of plastic bags. I wouldn’t wish bedbugs on anyone, either.
Just read this post (cuz of your linky) and thought I’d let you know so you can pass on the love – here in Toronto we’re having a huge bed bug problem as well, and apparently, one of the things feeding it is…. going to the laundromat! Apparently, you should never use those folding tables. Eco friendly types (like myself) who wash in cold and dry on “low” are doing the environment, AND bed bugs a favour.
Yikes! Thanks for the tip!
xo,
s
I had bed bugs. My husband is a maintenance worker and he brought them home from his job, which he ended up quitting. We actually had a dog come check for bed bugs, and he detected where the bed bugs were in our house. Then we paid $1300.00 to have them removed. They had to put huge heaters in our house because they said the only way to really get rid of bed bugs was to burn them with heat. It was a nightmare! I’m so glad it’s over.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!!!!!
We had bedbugs last winter. Got them from our European neighbors across the hall who had gone overseas at some point to visit family. Apparently they had been living with them for months and had no clue what they were, and their infestation got so bad that the bugs started coming across the hall to feed on us. It took almost 4 months to get rid of them completely. On the bright side, neither my husband nor myself were allergic to their bites. We never got any bumps! Just the gross little stains on our sheets.
These little buggers are terrible. I just read on a website that they have developed some genetic mutation that is making them impervious to chemical treatment. Pretty scary!
Hey.. Do you know the mystery chemical your landlord used.?
So sorry, I don’t. It was a spray of some sort and it was sort of powdery and white? Really gross.
-John
Sorry so late to the party, but I discovered diatomaceous earth recently as a totally kid/pet/human friendly way to get rid of anything with a hard outer shell– ants, pincher bugs, spiders… you name it!! DE is fossilized remains of diatoms (teeny weenie organisms). Microscopically, they are little bitty RAZORS that slice and dice the outer shell of insects that cause them to dry out and die from dehydration. Super duper safe as long as you’re not using the DE used for cleaning pools, but if you look for the “food grade” variety, you’re in the clear! I just powdered the whole perimeter of my house yesterday because we’re entering in to ant/pincher bug season.
So interesting! Great tip!
xo,
s
I was reading this while sitting on my bed, feeling super squirmish already when I feel something run down my back and land on the bed. I jumped so high the laptop went flying and as I turned around to look, it was a bobby pin falling out of my hair. Whew, no bugs!
Whew! So glad.
xo
s
My wife and I just bought our first house and we just discovered that our little 100 year old DC row home is stuck between two bed bug infested houses.
It wasn’t pretty to see our renovation budget wiped out by dealing with bugs from neighbors that are not willing to treat their own homes. Our lesson: We will never buy a row home/apartment in a transitioning neighborhood ever again.
Thank you for taking the time to share your story. We are going through similar situation,we have never had a problem until about a month ago.. I live in an apartment complex. Notified the management who only came up with some generic pesticide for killing such things as roaches,ants, etc.. All this seem to do was piss off the bed bugs. They informed us that using a chemical would require us to leave the apartment for a 24 hour period.. Hmmm, well I guess that’s out, because we have not heard from them since, that was 2 weeks ago. We have given them a 30 day notice to vacate, and terminate our lease.. When we move I am leaving almost the entire furnishing and everything else here.. I will never “hopefully” go through this again. It is a total nightmare. I have never itched so much in my life.. Yes it is depressing , stressful, etc.. etc.. etc…