fleas?

[desertpenguin]

so we don't actually have any pets (yet), however the house we just bought was inhabited by the sellers up until we took possession of the house and they had two dogs. we've been living here for less than a week now and i suspect that twice i have seen a flea on my arm. i don't think any of us have been bit though, and the day we moved in we had the carpet in the living room and on the stairs professionally shampooed. (which didn't do enough to get rid of the stains and stench, but that's another story...) those are the only areas downstairs that have carpet and the rest of the floor has been swept and mopped. i don't think the dogs were allowed upstairs judging by the difference in the smell and amount of staining on the upstairs carpet. so, my question is...should i be doing something? and if so, what? i don't want us to be infested by fleas!

[boobybunny]

Sprinkle borax on all your carpets downstairs... everywhere..
Leave it for 24 hours and then vacuum


Or, tear out the carpet and lay hard wood. Which is what we did. Now we have dogs, and the hard wood floors are sooo soooo much easier than the carpet upstairs.

[vermontmomma]

i second the borax suggestion, but would do the upstairs too just to be safe. i've heard that they like to go towards light and if you put a dish of water under a nightlight they'll drown, haven't tried it.
for those that do have dogs, wash the dog with murphy's oil soap (bonus-smells good and shiny dog) or store brand dandruff shampoo (no doggy dandruff but you don't want them licking it really)

[desertpenguin]

i had thought about doing the borax or diatomaceous earth but the problem is that i have an almost 5 yo and a 14 mo and they will be playing in anything i put on the carpet. i would LOVE to put hardwood but we don't really have the money for that (plus the bazillion other expensive things we found out that needed fixed or replaced after we moved in. sigh. the joys of home ownership)....i'm hoping that soon we'll be able to put down wood laminate flooring in the living room but it's going to cost around $500 to do that...maybe our friends will feel generous in giving us $$$ for our housewarming instead of gifts? but anyhoo i think i'm just going to vacuum like crazy and hope that'll be enough....

[momofmine]

I think you have to really stick with it and eventually you will get all the stages of the life cycle of the fleas. Vacuum every day. You can also use salt instead of Borax if you are worried about your kids crawling on the carpet. I would put the salt down at night after kids are asleep and leave it on over night and then vacuum it up really good the next day before the kids wake up. I would probably do this several nights in a row. I also used a product called Kleen Green, that someone here recommended.

[desertpenguin]

oK, thanks! i know whatever we finally do we'll have to treat the upstairs as well as vermontmomma suggested since every time we take a bath upstairs we wash off a flea or two. sigh.