Battling the beasties – round one

Ding ding. The fight has begun.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we discovered *blergh* bedbugs on Sunday. After a horrible afternoon/evening of cleaning, vacuuming, steaming and feeling completely grossed out, we thought we might have eradicated them. We were, after all, ruthless.

On Monday, we were still feeling itchy. It was probably mostly psychological, but Hubby did some research online and according to the council webpage, you can “Get help from the council” with pests such as bedbugs.

Always the optimist, Hubs interpreted that as “The council will come and take care of the problem, free of charge.” I was a bit more wary of the phrasing, but agreed to call to get information. I spent most of the night cleaning the sofa.

After a couple of failed attempts to get through on the phone on Monday, I finally spoke to a friendly lady in the Pest Control department who told me it would be nearly £200 for a three-course treatment. I thanked her and said I’d call back after speaking with my husband.

Since money’s a bit on the tight side right now, we decided to wait and see if all our work on Sunday took care of the problem. If we had any more bites or saw any more live bugs, we’d get the treatment.

Yesterday morning, Hubby got up a bit later than Pumpkin and me. I heard him shuffle around in the bedroom and then lift up the mattress. I disappointed “Euuuch” followed and I knew exactly what that meant. I made the call later in the day and an appointment was made for today between nine and one.

The lady who booked the appointment also emailed me a PDF that explained the treatment – a spray on the affected areas that would be repeated two more times over the course of six weeks. To prepare, I had to do the following:

• Remove all bed linens
• Empty all drawers, shelves, cupboards, etc in the rooms to be treated
• Move furniture away from walls
• vacuum

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Everything in the rooms had to be placed in bin bags and tightly sealed shut. Nothing could be taken out of the rooms in question, unless it was rubbish – that needed to be placed in an outside bin.

So, I headed down to the shops, baby in tow, to stock up on bin bags.

Then when we got home, the process began.

It was a lot more work than I expected to get everything packed up.The bedroom and living room are where we keep most of our stuff (including three bookcases that are almost all double-stacked).

By the time everything was packed up, I had covered the floor in black bags and it felt oddly like we were getting ready to move out.

The only problem was that there were so many bags lying around that it was impossible to move the furniture away from the walls. I figured I’d done the best I could and waited for the man to arrive.

At about 10:30, I got a call from some horrible lady at the council. She was ringing to make sure that I had done all the required prep work. She went through the list and when she got to the bit about moving furniture, I explained my problem.

“Oh, well if you’re not ready, I’ll have to reschedule the appointment,” she said.

“No, it’s not that I’m not ready – I have packed everything up. It’s just that it’s a small apartment and there’s no more room,” I tried to explain

“Well, the contractor needs to be able to do his job. If you’ve not done what’s required, he’ll have to come back another time.”

“But that’s the problem. There’s nothing else I can do.” I tried to keep calm. “I appreciate that he’s busy and needs to get in and out as quickly as possible but there’s literally nothing else I can do.”

She went through the list again.

“Look,” I was getting annoyed, “I’ve packed up my entire life into bin bags. My flat looks like a skip. I can’t move the furniture any more. There’s no room.”

Maybe a different tactic would work, I thought. “For example, the bedroom is so small that if I move the bed away from the wall, you can’t open the door.”

She finally agreed to talk to the contractor, let him know about the situation and call me back if there were any problems. I agreed, mainly because I wanted the call to be over.

A few minutes later she rang again. The contractor said he was on his way and would assess the situation when he got here. I hoped he’d be more reasonable than this woman and begrudgingly thanked her before hanging up.

When he arrived, the contractor asked me a few questions about what the bugs looked like and tried to help me figure out how they’d gotten in. He said our case sounded unusual and seemed a bit skeptical about the type of bugs we actually have, but he got to spraying and said there was no problem with how the furniture was. He was happy to shove things out of the way as needed.

After he finished spraying, he said it looked like we’d caught the problem early – there were very few signs and it was probably all contained. He’ll be back in two weeks to spray again.

The spraying probably took ten minutes – I’d spent hours putting things in bin bags. Pumpkin and I had to leave the house for a couple of hours while it dried and when we got back, I started unpacking again. At least for the next visit, the only thing I have to do to get ready is remove the bedding.

One good thing to come of this is that it has given us a good opportunity to have a thorough clear-out of clothing, books and DVDs. I’m campaigning to get rid of most of the DVDs and I’ve already culled a bag-full of books.

As much as I love books, they take up room that we don’t really have and I’m tired of moving them from one place to another. I’m hanging on to a few, but anything that I’m not interested in keeping is going. If I want to read it in the future, I’ll buy the Kindle version.

So, I guess there is a silver lining to a creepy-crawly infestation. *shudder*

Has your home ever been invaded by some type of pest? Tell me about it in the comments below – hearing about other people’s experiences makes me feel better :-). Also, when was the last time you had a good clear-out? What was your motivation?