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When I moved in with my boyfriends, little did I know I would be moving in with the house's "little Friends" too. Apparently the part of town he had chosen to rent in was infested with bed bugs! I woke up after the first night with dozens of little bites that itched like the devil. I don't share my home with uninvited guests so I set out to clean house.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:off ice:office" /

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The first step was to head to the hardware store. I bought 12 cans of spray and 8 insect bombs that were supposed to work on bed bugs. When I got home I stripped the bed and tossed the sheets in the garbage (I hated those sheets anyway!). I put everything that might have bedbugs into clear plastic totes and left them in the backyard in the hot sun. They would stay there for two days.

The mattresses were the next to see the great outdoors. I drug them outside and left them on the front lawn. I am sure everyone in the neighborhood knew why they were out there, but I didn't care. This was war!

I read the directions carefully, and then set off a bomb in every room, making sure all windows were closed and closet doors were open. While the bombs were doing their thing, went to my storage unit to find clothes for my man and myself for the next day.

When I got back home, I aired out the house making sure every window was open and turning on the fans and air conditioners. I used the sprays I had bought around the base-boards of the house and thoroughly sprayed the mattresses still baking outside.

When I returned to the house the next day there were dozens of Bedbug carcasses in every room. I swept the up and pitched them all in the garbage. Outside, I wrapped the mattresses in plastic and drug them back into the house. The plastic cover was supposed to kill the bedbugs in the mattress and keep new ones out The clothes were brought back in but kept in their new plastic homes.

This seemed to end the problem, but the exterminator I spoke with sold me they were hearty little bugs, so repeated this whole process every weekend for 2 months.

It has been a little over 4 months now and I haven't seen any bugs or woken up with any bite marks. I still bomb once a month and spray the baseboards weekly just in case. I am also paranoid about bringing them into the house now. I shake out my clothes as I enter the house, and all bags of clothing (whether new or from the laundry) stay outside for 2 days before entering the house. Even though we seem to have won the battle, I have a feeling we are in war for the long haul.

Learn more about this author, Sarah Salas.
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