There are 2 of us in the apartment I live in and the landowners live upstairs. I heard my wife mention they were going around and the next thing you know, my wife was discovering little bugs on the arm of her loveseat (we have both a loveseat and and standard sized couch).
For a couple of weeks, neither of us was sure they were bed bugs (I'm a total novice at this). No specimens were kept until 2 small specimens about 3 weeks ago. Since then, I have been doing a lot of researching. I started identifying them about 2 weeks ago. In the past week, I have killed about 10 adults and 1 nymph in the living room area and one on the outside of the bedroom door. My wife has a habit of napping on the couch and we caught a gorged one on her the other day. I just woke up in bed and went to scratch my leg and discovered a possible specimen feeding on me, but I was silly enough to grab it and, in the dark dropped it.
We have 1 income. We're behind on rent and, even though we live in one of those states that says the tenant isn't liable, they flat out refused to help. I'm afraid to push the issue, because we are sure to see eviction due to the back rent alone. It doesn't matter if we won a court case we could never afford if we're on the streets during the process.
Most likely, public transportation was the culprit that brought them in, but with the epidemic going on in this country, who knows?
At any rate. My wife has been a bit of a hoarder and we have clutter and clothes scattered about the apartment. I finally got her to get a small shop vac, some DE, a spray and a few traps yesterday. Until then, all I could do is kill live bugs and spray rubbing alcohol all over the place (we don't smoke, so the fire hazard is slightly reduced).
We simply can't afford an inspection, never mind a treatment and I know it's been a good 8 weeks at least, so guaranteed a good infestation has already taken hold.
We don't have them yet, but I will look into covers for the couches and the bedding. We need to replace the mattress bugs or not. It's a broken spring mattress.
The concern I have is, we have a lot of books and electronics. My wife has knitting material, among other things that we would like to keep. We can't afford new dishes. Simply put, we can't afford to replace anything. We don't have the money, time or patience to cook every single thing individually in special ovens.
Plus, there's the fear that the bugs will head upstairs. If that happens, we're basically out on the streets.
I'm still very new to this whole thing (we won a battle with cockroaches in another state, thanks to a filthy neighbor, and that seemed so much easier to deal with).
Is there any chance we can DIY and come out of this with both our sanity and our stuff, without professional help or are we just rowing up a creek without a paddle?
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oceanofbugs7 on "Poor and cluttered"
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