Let me just emphasize the severity of the bedbug thing. You never, ever wan to live with bedbugs. Never.
I lived in a community house for a while a few years ago, and we had a terrible infestation of bedbugs. We had an exterminator come in once a month and spray everything. This house has been battling bedbugs for nearly ten years now. Nothing except burning the house down will ever make them go away. They traveled in a suitcase from a NYC hotel, as far as we can tell, and because of the stigma, the person who brought them didn't own up to the fact for several months -- long enough for the bugs to spread throughout the house.
I used to sleep with a giant can of Aqua-Net next to my bed, wake up every hour or so and spray the mattress to kill all the bugs that had crawled out during that time to feast on my blood. There seemed to be an inexhaustible source of them in the wooden walls, floorboards, between the boards of the furniture, in books, etc., etc... It was truly horrible. I started imagining bedbugs everywhere.
The moral of the story is, much as I love buying secondhand, I would rather live without furniture forever than live with bedbugs again. When I moved out of the house, everything had to leave in heavy-duty plastic bags and go directly to the laundromat, where I tumbled-dry everything at high heat to kill any bugs that might be lurking. Clothing, bedding, books, shoes, everything. Only then would I take it to a new place. Furniture I gave up for lost.
I lived in a community house for a while a few years ago, and we had a terrible infestation of bedbugs. We had an exterminator come in once a month and spray everything. This house has been battling bedbugs for nearly ten years now. Nothing except burning the house down will ever make them go away. They traveled in a suitcase from a NYC hotel, as far as we can tell, and because of the stigma, the person who brought them didn't own up to the fact for several months -- long enough for the bugs to spread throughout the house.
I used to sleep with a giant can of Aqua-Net next to my bed, wake up every hour or so and spray the mattress to kill all the bugs that had crawled out during that time to feast on my blood. There seemed to be an inexhaustible source of them in the wooden walls, floorboards, between the boards of the furniture, in books, etc., etc... It was truly horrible. I started imagining bedbugs everywhere.
The moral of the story is, much as I love buying secondhand, I would rather live without furniture forever than live with bedbugs again. When I moved out of the house, everything had to leave in heavy-duty plastic bags and go directly to the laundromat, where I tumbled-dry everything at high heat to kill any bugs that might be lurking. Clothing, bedding, books, shoes, everything. Only then would I take it to a new place. Furniture I gave up for lost.
