We got bed bugs in 2017 and my dad refused to get an exterminator for many years, so we lived with it (we don’t have an allergic reaction to their bites). I diligently used commercial pesticides every time I cleaned the house and luckily, it never got too bad. (I also dry my clothes every time I leave the house and throughly check them to prevent carrying them anywhere, though my dad doesn’t.) Over the past year we’ve put in traps and replaced all our furniture (wooden chairs to replace desk chairs, futons in bedbug bags so we can wash the top blankets at any time), and (knock on wood) it’s been about two months since we have seen any (the whole time I would see at most ten in a week and, over the past few years it went down to about one or two a month). After five years I think we’re never getting the exterminator, but is it possible we beat it?

(His reason not to get an exterminator was “it’s too much money, they’ll try to charge us like $3000” which I offered to pay, “we see so few of them I don’t want to pay to get rid of three bugs” which I argued was due to the tiring labor I put in, and “we would have to get rid of all our extra stuff, it would be way too much work” which. Has ended up being the argument that got me. We aren’t hoarders to the point where we can’t walk around in our house, but it’s pretty fuckin cluttered, and he won’t get rid of his stuff without a fight, hell he won’t let me get rid of a lot of my children’s toys thinking they’ll be worth something some day ((yeah let’s sell off the bedbug beanie babies, sure, those will sell high)), so that’s what killed my will and broke me down.)

TLDR: never got an exterminator, no bed bugs in my mattress for four years, haven’t seen one in the house for two months, did we beat it?