To just fucking burn my house down!

[sheskilledmyplant]

Ok so that's a little dramatic..but that's how I feel lately because of these fucking pests!!

So we have lived here 4 years. We ripped the old bathroom out and replaced (downstairs bathroom) after 3 months of it being done I started hearing moving around Underneath the bath panel..yep we had mice! 4 years on we can still hear them from time to time even though dh has been around the house 10,000 time to block up any holes.

Last year our kitten got fleas and infested the whole house it was absolutely hideous! What with the heatwave and being bitten a zillion times a day it was torture. We got some indorex, took the cat back to the vets and he prescribed him some better flea treatment and we haven't seen a flea since.

Then last November I noticed I kept getting bitten in bed but my husband wasn't, turns out it was bed bugs! We had to throw the bed and mattress out just before Xmas and replace it. Also found one on the sofa!

Then last week I noticed my two year old was being bitten. After a thorough examination of the bedroom I found a bedbug on the frame of her bed with lots of little black dots on the wood frame. After more inspection I found what I think are carpet beetles 😩
I've blocked up any holes and crevices and sprayed.

I'm so fed up, I can't take much more of this! I've lived in 2 other houses and not had one of these problems let alone all 4!

Seriously, wrap it very well before you dispose of it. They will fall off when you manoevre it out of the window and will then be straight back on any new bed you put in there or into another room if you leave it empty.

If you are leaving it outside for the council or until you can dispose of it yourself, you also need to make it unuseable so someone doesn't decide to take it and use it. Slash the mattress very obviously or spray paint on it or something.

And YY it is sooo stressful! It's worth doing properly though, you don't want to be having to do this all again in a couple of months' time.

Good plan swapping the beds - have you checked your bed btw?

It could be from next door and if so that would suggest they have a heavy infestation and until that is dealt with you won't be able to get rid of them.

Could be from anywhere though - the bugs don't care who they hitch a ride on.

This is another reason to get the professionals in, they should be able to tell if they're coming from next door and can advise on what to do.

Calamine lotion is quite soothing on the bites. I didn't have any so I've been using anusol on mine

Some people don't react to the bites at all so it's possible both you and DH were getting bitten. Also it's very common for a reaction to be delayed for several days (which is a bit of a headfuck when you're trying to work out if they've finally gone or not).

I think they prefer some people to others as well though. DH was getting badly bitten and I wasn't. I thought I was just not reacted, but we had to do a bed shuffle as well because we discovered them when adult DS was in the process of moving out and they were on his bed too so I had to move in there during treatment. As soon as I started sleeping in that bed I was getting bitten to fuck. So I think given a choice they preferred DH but they'd bite me if I was the only one there.

Burning the house down was precisely what I wanted to do when we had bed bugs. Hateful things and a total nightmare to get rid of properly - they are a bit like a whack-a-mole game, as just when you think you smashed them they pop up somewhere else.

We did manage to nuke ours though (no sightings or bites for 8 months anyway) We cleared a weekend, put MIL on babysitting duty and DH and I absolutely steamed the shit out of all the beds and sofas, baseboards and surrounding areas. Bed bugs cannot live through extreme heat so it is a good way to deal with them if you are thorough and get into every crevice.

As other posters have said, it is best not to amateurishly douse them in chemicals as it only means some of them get resistant to it and are harder to kill in future if you do have to resort to getting the pros in. Steaming obviously doesn't have that disadvantage, so might be worth a shot just to see if you can eradicate the problem.

It may well be that they are coming in from next door, in which case there isn't much you can do unless the neighbors are willing to sort their infestation. But it is entirely possible that they are just in your house - if you go on vacation, use public transport etc then you are at risk of picking up a hitch-hiking bug. Just because your neighbors are dirty scuzzballs doesn't mean they are definitely the origin of the problem, because bed bugs really don't give a crap how clean or filthy your house is.

My ex brought an infestation home with him from a hotel. We tried to self fumigate the house and it literally didn’t have any impact. You’re going to have to suck up the cost of a professional fumigator to stop your poor child being so badly bitten.

If it’s the neighbours, can you not call the council/ environmental health or something and report them?

If the neighbours are that bad call environmental health. I agree with professional fumigation it will be money well spent. My son used a company that were way less than £800 and it was guaranteed.

DIY sprays proved useless long term. And then move house.

I was bitten all over though and I couldn't work out why he wasn't.

He was, it's just his skin doesn't react to bites.

I found this out when our house was infested with fleas after DH decided to take in a stray pregnant cat. (Thanks!) Myself and DS had terrible bites all over us, H never had a one. Had similar on holidays - DS and I both covered in mosquito bites, H not bothered one bit.

After researching "why do some people not get bitten by mosquitos" one itchy night, I learned that everybody gets bitten but only some people react to the bite with itching, swelling etc. From then on I tried to view my reactiveness as my body's immune system doing a really good job.

I sold a previous house purely because I got so fed up of repeated, unrelated pest infestations despite the house being fully modernised and me being very particular about domestic hygiene.

The house just seemed to be permanently crawling with insects, in every room I could find millipedes, spiders, woodlice, little brown beetles.

It had the biggest house spiders I've ever seen and no amount of dusting could keep up with the constant cobwebs everywhere

I had numerous infestations of ants, would often find slug trails, once came home from holiday to find dozens of dead bluebottles, could hear mice in the walls and at one time I even heard the tell tale night time tapping of Deathwatch Beetle in the attic.

It was a lovely looking house, fantastic neighbours and a perfect location but I just couldn't put up with all the creepy crawlies any more!