Family with bedbugs visiting, am I being extra?
December 23, 2022 6:19 PM Subscribe
More details inside, but my partner’s brother family is visiting the house and they have a bedbug infestation. It is not my house, so I don’t think I have say, but my partner wants to visit my parent’s house and we also live together, but I feel like I’m being unreasonable there.
Over thanksgiving, my partner stayed at his brother’s house and it turned out that the bedroom he stayed at had bedbugs. It wasn’t until 3 days that he discovered the bites, as he had an allergic reaction with hives. He was COVERED. At least 78 bites on all parts of his body. By the time the bites appeared, he had returned home and so we’ve been on high alert in our own home. It’s been sleepless nights as every bite and rash we get we fear are bed bugs, and according to our friend who had them in the city, they can take about two months for us to notice the infestation if he brought anything back (which we suspect could have happened, he left his suitcase and clothes on the bedroom floor.) His brother didn’t know that they had bedbugs, so once he knew, he went to check the rest of his house and found them in the couch and other bedrooms. The brother said he’d take care of it with vacuuming and spraying rubbing alcohol, as this is the second time he’s had it. Apparently, he’s in the 30% that don’t react to bedbug bites, so he truly didn’t know. It sounds like it’s a pretty full blown infestation. Partner vowed not to stay at his brothers until he knows the bedbugs are gone.
Anyways, fast forward to now. My partner is staying at his parents for the holidays. Of course, because it’s the holidays, brother will be coming over to their house and staying over, along with brother’s family. While partner’s parents know about the bedbugs and have been worried, they don’t want brother to feel bad or awkward, so they just want to continue as normal and then change the sheets after. I’ve been so nervous because partner wants to visit my parents house after his brother stays, and I’m nervous that they could get exposed. My mom has terrible allergies to so many things, I can only imagine how bad her skin would break out if she got bit or had bugs transferred. I’m also concerned that when partner and I go back to our home, he’ll be exposed again and could bring back them to our house and we’ll have to keep on red alert for another few months.
I know that I have no say on how his parents handle things. But when I brought up that I’m worried about him visiting the house, or bringing them back, he says that I’m being too cautious and it will be fine. When I Google, I find anything from “it’s fine, just take precautions” to “look, don’t risk it.” It doesn’t seem like partner’s parents want to take precautions because they don’t want to make brother feel awkward. They explicitly have said that any bedbug talk is off the table.
Am I being too anxious about this when it comes to visiting my parents/coming home? Perhaps if my partner washes his clothes on high heat and leaves his shoes outside, he could be ok before visiting us, but I’m not sure about coming back to our home, I’m guessing we’ll have to isolate his things just in case. Maybe there is a very low chance of anything happening and I am being a stick in the mud?
Thanks for any advice!
Over thanksgiving, my partner stayed at his brother’s house and it turned out that the bedroom he stayed at had bedbugs. It wasn’t until 3 days that he discovered the bites, as he had an allergic reaction with hives. He was COVERED. At least 78 bites on all parts of his body. By the time the bites appeared, he had returned home and so we’ve been on high alert in our own home. It’s been sleepless nights as every bite and rash we get we fear are bed bugs, and according to our friend who had them in the city, they can take about two months for us to notice the infestation if he brought anything back (which we suspect could have happened, he left his suitcase and clothes on the bedroom floor.) His brother didn’t know that they had bedbugs, so once he knew, he went to check the rest of his house and found them in the couch and other bedrooms. The brother said he’d take care of it with vacuuming and spraying rubbing alcohol, as this is the second time he’s had it. Apparently, he’s in the 30% that don’t react to bedbug bites, so he truly didn’t know. It sounds like it’s a pretty full blown infestation. Partner vowed not to stay at his brothers until he knows the bedbugs are gone.
Anyways, fast forward to now. My partner is staying at his parents for the holidays. Of course, because it’s the holidays, brother will be coming over to their house and staying over, along with brother’s family. While partner’s parents know about the bedbugs and have been worried, they don’t want brother to feel bad or awkward, so they just want to continue as normal and then change the sheets after. I’ve been so nervous because partner wants to visit my parents house after his brother stays, and I’m nervous that they could get exposed. My mom has terrible allergies to so many things, I can only imagine how bad her skin would break out if she got bit or had bugs transferred. I’m also concerned that when partner and I go back to our home, he’ll be exposed again and could bring back them to our house and we’ll have to keep on red alert for another few months.
I know that I have no say on how his parents handle things. But when I brought up that I’m worried about him visiting the house, or bringing them back, he says that I’m being too cautious and it will be fine. When I Google, I find anything from “it’s fine, just take precautions” to “look, don’t risk it.” It doesn’t seem like partner’s parents want to take precautions because they don’t want to make brother feel awkward. They explicitly have said that any bedbug talk is off the table.
Am I being too anxious about this when it comes to visiting my parents/coming home? Perhaps if my partner washes his clothes on high heat and leaves his shoes outside, he could be ok before visiting us, but I’m not sure about coming back to our home, I’m guessing we’ll have to isolate his things just in case. Maybe there is a very low chance of anything happening and I am being a stick in the mud?
Thanks for any advice!
The fact that you are preemptively including supporting evidence for why your mom is a particularly high risk bedbug exposure candidate means that this is a clash of avoidant personalities that has completely spun out of control – you don’t need a reason to not want to fuck with bedbugs!!! Have you asked your parents how they feel about the situation? They might not care, they might be like me and have a Velveteen Rabbit bonfire set up on the front lawn for everything you wore over to your in-laws’, but it’d probably be useful to check in either way
posted by katiec at 6:53 PM on December 23, 2022
posted by katiec at 6:53 PM on December 23, 2022
Over a decade ago, I had bedbugs. It was not fun and because I didn’t want to spread it, I isolated a lot, which was very hard on me. I’ll spare you the details but I’m team “it’s not worth it to me.” That last part is important. Only you can determine your risk tolerance.
For me, I’d have partner strip bare, then put clothes in a bag to immediately transport to wash and shoes outside. No bag and no coat inside. For some this is extreme. To me, it’s this, or no visit.
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 7:19 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
For me, I’d have partner strip bare, then put clothes in a bag to immediately transport to wash and shoes outside. No bag and no coat inside. For some this is extreme. To me, it’s this, or no visit.
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 7:19 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
So when visiting a place that may have bedbugs, first thing to do is to limit the things that come back with you to eliminate bedbug vector risks.
This means, as few bags, clothes and shoes as possible. For the things you do bring, they need to be washable and or disposable, or something you can keep wrapped in a garbage bag and tied for a long time. So, suitcase should be the cheapest one you have and or just use a garbage bag to begin with. Don't bring clothes you can't dry on high heat. Don't bring shoes you aren't willing to bag/toss or dry on high heat.
The things you do bring get bagged outside, chucked into the dryer immediately. Clothes worn from the visit included. Shower immediately as well.
Extra protection, get bedbug covers if you don't have them. It makes the whole bedbug experience so much easier to deal with no matter what.
Bedbugs aren't magical. They won't enter unless you carry them with you. Get rid of ways they can sneak into your home.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:26 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
This means, as few bags, clothes and shoes as possible. For the things you do bring, they need to be washable and or disposable, or something you can keep wrapped in a garbage bag and tied for a long time. So, suitcase should be the cheapest one you have and or just use a garbage bag to begin with. Don't bring clothes you can't dry on high heat. Don't bring shoes you aren't willing to bag/toss or dry on high heat.
The things you do bring get bagged outside, chucked into the dryer immediately. Clothes worn from the visit included. Shower immediately as well.
Extra protection, get bedbug covers if you don't have them. It makes the whole bedbug experience so much easier to deal with no matter what.
Bedbugs aren't magical. They won't enter unless you carry them with you. Get rid of ways they can sneak into your home.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:26 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
No, I don't think you're being extra-- bed bugs are very sneaky and you've had a bad experience with them. Your reaction is understandable.
Perhaps he could skip the trip to your parents'? You can't keep him away from your shared home, but perhaps the family visit isn't worth this anxiety.
posted by Pitachu at 7:35 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Perhaps he could skip the trip to your parents'? You can't keep him away from your shared home, but perhaps the family visit isn't worth this anxiety.
posted by Pitachu at 7:35 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
People don't carry bedbugs, just the things they carry with them.
Talk to partner about this as you don't want them to be surprised. Ask if you can buy them some new outfits and shoes to have waiting for them. Try to frame this in the most positive way possible, maybe you are excited to have an excuse to buy them some clothes you think they will look great in. Remember to include anything they might usually like to have if they are on a trip, pajamas, robe, appropriate layers for the weather. Don't forget hair ties, do-rag, or other hair accessories. Previous clothes and suitcase get bagged up. Have a plan for any personal items from the suitcase they might need, whether that's buying extras or how to clean them and have them available.
Also your parents house and your house should have bedbug proof mattress covers.
posted by yohko at 7:48 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Talk to partner about this as you don't want them to be surprised. Ask if you can buy them some new outfits and shoes to have waiting for them. Try to frame this in the most positive way possible, maybe you are excited to have an excuse to buy them some clothes you think they will look great in. Remember to include anything they might usually like to have if they are on a trip, pajamas, robe, appropriate layers for the weather. Don't forget hair ties, do-rag, or other hair accessories. Previous clothes and suitcase get bagged up. Have a plan for any personal items from the suitcase they might need, whether that's buying extras or how to clean them and have them available.
Also your parents house and your house should have bedbug proof mattress covers.
posted by yohko at 7:48 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
You are not being unreasonable. But it's also ultimately your parents' decision if they want to risk bedbugs to see you. Tell them all the facts and the timeline of various visits, tell them you're leaning toward staying away but didn't want to make the decision unilaterally, and find out what they want.
Personally I'd be in full decontam mode on your partner AND his things when he gets home. Everything gets some combination of washed, steamed, left outside, sterilized, or just plain thrown away. He travels as light and disposable as he can.
posted by Stacey at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2022
Personally I'd be in full decontam mode on your partner AND his things when he gets home. Everything gets some combination of washed, steamed, left outside, sterilized, or just plain thrown away. He travels as light and disposable as he can.
posted by Stacey at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2022
Partner's family can make their own decisions, but for your partner it's pretty easy to keep from bringing them anywhere with them.
Your partner needs to bring clothes, luggage, shoes, jacket, etc. that can be put through a commercial washer and dryer. Act normal at the family's house. When they leave, put their luggage in a thick garbage bag. You meet them at a laundromat with a fresh set of clothes/shoes/jacket. Everything from the house goes into the laundry and gets washed and dried.
After that, you're fine. Bed bugs don't survive a full dryer cycle.
posted by Narrow Harbor at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
Your partner needs to bring clothes, luggage, shoes, jacket, etc. that can be put through a commercial washer and dryer. Act normal at the family's house. When they leave, put their luggage in a thick garbage bag. You meet them at a laundromat with a fresh set of clothes/shoes/jacket. Everything from the house goes into the laundry and gets washed and dried.
After that, you're fine. Bed bugs don't survive a full dryer cycle.
posted by Narrow Harbor at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
The brother said he’d take care of it with vacuuming and spraying rubbing alcohol, as this is the second time he’s had it.
Yeah, no. That will do *nothing* to get rid of a bedbug infestation that was severe enough to give your brother 78 bites in three days. Again, and I cannot reiterate this enough, that will do *nothing.* Basically the only way to get rid of an infestation that deep is to seal off the entire house for a full day or two and pipe in hot air until they all bake to death, or -- somewhat less of a guarantee -- blast the entire place with poison. Until that happens, your partner's brother is bringing them everywhere he goes.
We had the beginnings of a bedbug infestation a few years ago, and they were brought into the house by a family member who had a severe infestation. Then that family member took a half measure in treating their infestation and brought more of them into our house after they thought they'd dealt with it. We spent well over a thousand dollars on repeated chemical treatments. Our nerves were shot. We couldn't sleep well. My partner found one crawling out of her purse as she was sitting at a meeting. They showed up in our kitchen cabinets, in our basement. And this was a mild infestation that we were treating obsessively. Take it from me, you are not overreacting.
... brother will be coming over to their house and staying over, along with brother’s family. While partner’s parents know about the bedbugs and have been worried, they don’t want brother to feel bad or awkward, so they just want to continue as normal and then change the sheets after.
I have to point this out too. It's not just your partner's brother, it's his whole family. Staying in how many different rooms? With how many suitcases and changes of clothes? Having seen the effects of a severe infestation -- bugs literally crawling across family members' clothes as they were wearing them, bugs turning up on every floor of our house weeks after they visited us the first time -- I really want to warn you and your family that they are not going to keep a lid on that by simply changing the sheets. I hate being the alarmist, but having lived through an infestation, I hope you and your family never have to go through one.
posted by cubeb at 9:09 PM on December 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
Yeah, no. That will do *nothing* to get rid of a bedbug infestation that was severe enough to give your brother 78 bites in three days. Again, and I cannot reiterate this enough, that will do *nothing.* Basically the only way to get rid of an infestation that deep is to seal off the entire house for a full day or two and pipe in hot air until they all bake to death, or -- somewhat less of a guarantee -- blast the entire place with poison. Until that happens, your partner's brother is bringing them everywhere he goes.
We had the beginnings of a bedbug infestation a few years ago, and they were brought into the house by a family member who had a severe infestation. Then that family member took a half measure in treating their infestation and brought more of them into our house after they thought they'd dealt with it. We spent well over a thousand dollars on repeated chemical treatments. Our nerves were shot. We couldn't sleep well. My partner found one crawling out of her purse as she was sitting at a meeting. They showed up in our kitchen cabinets, in our basement. And this was a mild infestation that we were treating obsessively. Take it from me, you are not overreacting.
... brother will be coming over to their house and staying over, along with brother’s family. While partner’s parents know about the bedbugs and have been worried, they don’t want brother to feel bad or awkward, so they just want to continue as normal and then change the sheets after.
I have to point this out too. It's not just your partner's brother, it's his whole family. Staying in how many different rooms? With how many suitcases and changes of clothes? Having seen the effects of a severe infestation -- bugs literally crawling across family members' clothes as they were wearing them, bugs turning up on every floor of our house weeks after they visited us the first time -- I really want to warn you and your family that they are not going to keep a lid on that by simply changing the sheets. I hate being the alarmist, but having lived through an infestation, I hope you and your family never have to go through one.
posted by cubeb at 9:09 PM on December 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
Spread diatomaceous earth around. Wash anything you can on hot and dry on the hottest setting you can. Contact a bed bug specialist (good if they have a bed bug sniffing dog) and consider treatment (heat treatment is good.)
Consider no contact with people that may spread them. Warn others. Share info with family that needs it.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:46 PM on December 23, 2022
Consider no contact with people that may spread them. Warn others. Share info with family that needs it.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:46 PM on December 23, 2022
We had bedbugs. My daughter bought a very nice couch from two men who were throwing it in a dumpster. They delivered it. I made them leave it on the porch, but the next day we had bites. It was like a bad sitcom.
Bedbugs aren't impossible to deal with in a single family residence. If you live in an apartment building you are pretty much doomed until the entire building is fumigated.
They're also a huge pain in the ass, and something you don't want in your house, you don't want over Christmas, you don't want to spread, and you don't want everyone who knows you appending the following to your name for ever and ever: 'You know, the bedbug people.'
The best way dto deal with them is to get some dry ice. Bedbugs breathe air, and dry is is solid carbon dioxide. Wrap every suitcase and bag in builders plastic, toss in two or three pounds of dry ice, make it as airtight as you can, and leave it for a solid twenty-four hours. You can get dry ice at welding shops, places that supply gas for industrial use, and often ice companies. They'll tell you it's dangerous, you're okay if you wear gloves and don't do anything stupid like letting the vapor fill a room and then sitting in it. Dry ice is the stuff that makes the pretty white mist in horror movies and Halloween parties.
If anyone balks at this, you don't want them in your house. Dump their stuff on the lawn, wrap their luggage, bring them in in a housecoat and put them in a long, hot shower. Wrap the luggage and dry ice it.
Alcohol? Yeah, if it's a high enough concentration and you saturate stuff. A little mist from a sprayer won't work. You don't know where they are, and you can't dunk your house in alcohol. It has to be a high concentration, too.
Heat? I've heard they can be killed in a dryer, on very high heat, for hours. But then the luggage is in your house.
I suspect you're going to get them, because obviously nobody seems to understand how serious this is.
What do you do?
They're insects. They can't go dormant, they can't not breathe. They can get through tiny spaces, but they can't fly.
Their life cycle is, as I recall, about three weeks. If they hatch and can't bite a human being, they're dead. You have to not get bitten for three weeks.
They can't crawl up clear packing tape. Put a single band around each leg of your bed, and make sure the covers don't touch the floor. If they're in the mattress, wrap it in builder's plastic. They can't climb that, either, or get through it. Put the sheets on over it and sleep in the bed. I checked my son's bed four months later and the plastic was still on it. "C, why is your mattress still wrapped?" "After the first night I didn't notice." He also wasn't getting bitten again.
You can also toss in some dry ice, and you can wrap a couch and dry ice it, too. Bedbugs like fabrics and rugs, and they love to get inside a couch.
They can't crawl through fuller's earth, which you can get at garden centers. I got a puffer for insecticide or something and blew it down the back of the couch and around the baseboards. I used methanol, too, but it dissipates quickly. I seriously prefer stuff that won't phase a human being.
You can find plans for a trap for them on the web. We never caught that many, because we were freaked out and obliterated them with everything we could. Traps are good - they're just a plastic bottle with something to make carbon dioxide, into which they crawl and die. Bedbugs locate their victims by the carbon dioxide they exhale, which you can see if your eyesight extends into the infrared.
Note that the trap is to show you if you have bedbugs. It doesn't kill enough to get rid of them.
You can also kill them by freezing the affected clothes and sheets and pillows, but it has to be, I think, deep freeze temperatures and for about forty-eight hours. A cold winter day will do if you're in Wisconsin or somewhere where it gets really cold.
After about a week we didn't get any more of the distinctive two-puncture bites. We kept the assault going for an entire month, randomly spraying methanol and vacuuming anything we could see.
We thought about fumigation, but it's expensive, extremely disruptive, and is not guaranteed to work the first time, or ever.
I found an amazing website with the above information, but much better, but I can't find it in among the endless barrage of fumigation ads and drivel like ask.com. There is, honest-to-God, a website selling 'the secret of killing bedbugs' for $500. I think the trick is to get people's money before they have time to think.
By the time we were finished we'd spent $30 on a roll of builder's plastic, $15 on fuller's earth, and $5 on methanol. Also a number of hours reading stuff online and spreading powder.
We were vacuuming up fuller's earth for months, but it's pretty innocuous if you're not a bedbug. We were more careful of methanol, and I wore a respirator. I wasn't convinced it helped. Vacuuming seemed like a good idea, since you'd do it anyway, though I don't know if it helped, either.
Two months later the neighbor's kid showed up with two suitcases. "They're fumigating our building for bedbugs and mum doesn't want our clothes covered in poison." I told him I was going out back to get a can of gas, and if his infested crap wasn't out of my house it would on the lawn, burning. He left.
Take this seriously, because while it's going on, it's your life. If someone says they're taking care of it, it's pretty obvious that they're not.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:54 PM on December 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
Bedbugs aren't impossible to deal with in a single family residence. If you live in an apartment building you are pretty much doomed until the entire building is fumigated.
They're also a huge pain in the ass, and something you don't want in your house, you don't want over Christmas, you don't want to spread, and you don't want everyone who knows you appending the following to your name for ever and ever: 'You know, the bedbug people.'
The best way dto deal with them is to get some dry ice. Bedbugs breathe air, and dry is is solid carbon dioxide. Wrap every suitcase and bag in builders plastic, toss in two or three pounds of dry ice, make it as airtight as you can, and leave it for a solid twenty-four hours. You can get dry ice at welding shops, places that supply gas for industrial use, and often ice companies. They'll tell you it's dangerous, you're okay if you wear gloves and don't do anything stupid like letting the vapor fill a room and then sitting in it. Dry ice is the stuff that makes the pretty white mist in horror movies and Halloween parties.
If anyone balks at this, you don't want them in your house. Dump their stuff on the lawn, wrap their luggage, bring them in in a housecoat and put them in a long, hot shower. Wrap the luggage and dry ice it.
Alcohol? Yeah, if it's a high enough concentration and you saturate stuff. A little mist from a sprayer won't work. You don't know where they are, and you can't dunk your house in alcohol. It has to be a high concentration, too.
Heat? I've heard they can be killed in a dryer, on very high heat, for hours. But then the luggage is in your house.
I suspect you're going to get them, because obviously nobody seems to understand how serious this is.
What do you do?
They're insects. They can't go dormant, they can't not breathe. They can get through tiny spaces, but they can't fly.
Their life cycle is, as I recall, about three weeks. If they hatch and can't bite a human being, they're dead. You have to not get bitten for three weeks.
They can't crawl up clear packing tape. Put a single band around each leg of your bed, and make sure the covers don't touch the floor. If they're in the mattress, wrap it in builder's plastic. They can't climb that, either, or get through it. Put the sheets on over it and sleep in the bed. I checked my son's bed four months later and the plastic was still on it. "C, why is your mattress still wrapped?" "After the first night I didn't notice." He also wasn't getting bitten again.
You can also toss in some dry ice, and you can wrap a couch and dry ice it, too. Bedbugs like fabrics and rugs, and they love to get inside a couch.
They can't crawl through fuller's earth, which you can get at garden centers. I got a puffer for insecticide or something and blew it down the back of the couch and around the baseboards. I used methanol, too, but it dissipates quickly. I seriously prefer stuff that won't phase a human being.
You can find plans for a trap for them on the web. We never caught that many, because we were freaked out and obliterated them with everything we could. Traps are good - they're just a plastic bottle with something to make carbon dioxide, into which they crawl and die. Bedbugs locate their victims by the carbon dioxide they exhale, which you can see if your eyesight extends into the infrared.
Note that the trap is to show you if you have bedbugs. It doesn't kill enough to get rid of them.
You can also kill them by freezing the affected clothes and sheets and pillows, but it has to be, I think, deep freeze temperatures and for about forty-eight hours. A cold winter day will do if you're in Wisconsin or somewhere where it gets really cold.
After about a week we didn't get any more of the distinctive two-puncture bites. We kept the assault going for an entire month, randomly spraying methanol and vacuuming anything we could see.
We thought about fumigation, but it's expensive, extremely disruptive, and is not guaranteed to work the first time, or ever.
I found an amazing website with the above information, but much better, but I can't find it in among the endless barrage of fumigation ads and drivel like ask.com. There is, honest-to-God, a website selling 'the secret of killing bedbugs' for $500. I think the trick is to get people's money before they have time to think.
By the time we were finished we'd spent $30 on a roll of builder's plastic, $15 on fuller's earth, and $5 on methanol. Also a number of hours reading stuff online and spreading powder.
We were vacuuming up fuller's earth for months, but it's pretty innocuous if you're not a bedbug. We were more careful of methanol, and I wore a respirator. I wasn't convinced it helped. Vacuuming seemed like a good idea, since you'd do it anyway, though I don't know if it helped, either.
Two months later the neighbor's kid showed up with two suitcases. "They're fumigating our building for bedbugs and mum doesn't want our clothes covered in poison." I told him I was going out back to get a can of gas, and if his infested crap wasn't out of my house it would on the lawn, burning. He left.
Take this seriously, because while it's going on, it's your life. If someone says they're taking care of it, it's pretty obvious that they're not.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:54 PM on December 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
Response by poster: Hi all, thanks for the responses and letting me know I might not be overreacting and crazy. I wanted to emphasize, the issue isn’t so much exposing partners parents, because it seems like they’re already going to get exposed with brother and his family going there today. My issue is that my partner and his family think they’ll be ok (as they can be, they all are freaking out about it but just don’t have the heart to talk to partner’s brother, they’re relatively avoidant.) And partner wants to come to MY parents house to visit them for holidays tomorrow. I have let my parents know about the exposure and they still want him to come, but it sounds like he might need to change clothes, take off shoes, or bring anything else inside, if he wanted to visit and that is *not* an outrageous ask? For our own home…we’ll just have to take more precautions with his suitcase and clothes and leave things outside/high heat wash them it sounds like. I think I just wanted confirmation that I wasn’t overreacting, because partner and family made me wonder if I was after I told partner the precautions he needed before visiting my family (“Well we’re gonna get the worst of it and we’ll be fine with these things, so y’all should be more than fine”) and I think I got that confirmation here. Whew. Thanks all.
posted by buttonedup at 10:34 AM on December 24, 2022
posted by buttonedup at 10:34 AM on December 24, 2022
I feel that the fact that the partner's brother doesn't get a reaction from bedbug bites is going to pretty much prevent him from ever getting rid of the infestation unless the family takes a harder line. (I say this as someone who mysteriously doesn't get a reaction from the local mosquitoes and thus has the freedom in my mosquito-y workplace to kind of shrug in situations where other people are taking extreme measures.) Since you can't make them take that harder line, I think you're sensible to take whatever measures you can to protect your own household.
Random note: if you seal things up with a lot of dry ice make sure it's not a truly airtight container and/or will not warm quickly. Dry ice with some water in a 2 liter soda bottle with the lid screwed on makes a fun/dangerous science demo/explosive device. (Standard "do not try this at home" disclaimer applies.)
posted by LadyOscar at 11:20 AM on December 24, 2022
Random note: if you seal things up with a lot of dry ice make sure it's not a truly airtight container and/or will not warm quickly. Dry ice with some water in a 2 liter soda bottle with the lid screwed on makes a fun/dangerous science demo/explosive device. (Standard "do not try this at home" disclaimer applies.)
posted by LadyOscar at 11:20 AM on December 24, 2022
Basically the only way to get rid of an infestation that deep is to seal off the entire house for a full day or two and pipe in hot air until they all bake to death...
Even this will not work if the bedbugs find a place to hide, such as inside pressed-wood furniture. It takes finding the hiding spot (itself a feat) and then throwing out that furniture and then paying for yet another heat treatment to get rid of them. Happened when I worked in a hotel. They *finally* got rid of them after multiple heat treatments, throwing out furniture, and enough chemicals to knock out an army. They had good incentive to make sure they were gone because bedbugs are *very* bad for business, and still it was a huge and expensive effort. And this was only for a few bedbugs in a single room - not swarms for which apparently the only solution is to gut the place/buy all new everything.
No. I do not think you are overreacting. I've seen the bites they inflict and how hard it is to get rid of them. Your best bet is to do everything you can to avoid getting an infestation in the first place.
posted by Crystal Fox at 1:35 PM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Even this will not work if the bedbugs find a place to hide, such as inside pressed-wood furniture. It takes finding the hiding spot (itself a feat) and then throwing out that furniture and then paying for yet another heat treatment to get rid of them. Happened when I worked in a hotel. They *finally* got rid of them after multiple heat treatments, throwing out furniture, and enough chemicals to knock out an army. They had good incentive to make sure they were gone because bedbugs are *very* bad for business, and still it was a huge and expensive effort. And this was only for a few bedbugs in a single room - not swarms for which apparently the only solution is to gut the place/buy all new everything.
No. I do not think you are overreacting. I've seen the bites they inflict and how hard it is to get rid of them. Your best bet is to do everything you can to avoid getting an infestation in the first place.
posted by Crystal Fox at 1:35 PM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
They can very easily hitch rides in coats and luggage. If possible, use duffle bags instead of suitcases, because the duffle bags can be thrown in the dryer on high heat. Basically, don't wear or bring anything there that can't be thrown in the dryer on high heat when you get home
posted by Jacqueline at 5:31 PM on December 24, 2022
posted by Jacqueline at 5:31 PM on December 24, 2022
You aren’t overreacting. He should have a complete change of clothes before he gets in your car after visiting your parents.
posted by saucysault at 1:31 AM on December 25, 2022
posted by saucysault at 1:31 AM on December 25, 2022
You’re not over reacting. If you don’t take preventative measures, you could be inviting a nightmare into your house that will drive you crazy for months or years if you’re unlucky. Follow all the advice given above about suitcases, clothing etc and tell your partner you’d rather be extra cautious than take the risk. Having lived through them twice before due to travellers bringing them to my house, I’d basically do anything to avoid ever having bed bugs again.
posted by Jubey at 8:50 PM on December 25, 2022
posted by Jubey at 8:50 PM on December 25, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
The nymphs of the bedbugs are practically invisible so they could easily hitch a ride in their bags or on their person. If they absolutely have to come I would be instituting some strict protocols.
All clothes packed in plastic bags and immediately put into a hot dryer to kill any bugs.
Suitcases unpacked outside and then vacuumed. Vacuum bag needs to be immediately removed, put in plastic and thrown out.
That should keep your in-laws relatively safe.
posted by brookeb at 6:49 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]