★★★★★
I got rid of my bed bugs fast using cat litter. One web source said to crush the crystals with a mortis and pestle, but, time must have passed and I found a brand of cat litter that has micro crystals of sylica gel at the grocery. :-D The silica gel dries out bed bugs.
Place a container (I used the plastic ones we get when we order Chinese take out, they have a good footprint for furniture legs and are shallow, and free) under the most human/animal occupied furniture legs first. Bed bugs will die soon after they pass through the silica gel. Bed bugs can hibernate for up to 18 months, so keep the silica litter under the furniture legs for that long.
Also, that oil soap made for wood kills bed bugs on the spot. I used more than a healthy dose in several gallons of water. I have a back pack sprayer. For the wood bed frame (mattresses removed) I just sprayed away and watched them come out from every crack. After all was flooded and I saw no more movement, I used a towel on the bed frame and a mop on the wood floor. We let the frame sit for two days to dry then wrapped in saran wrap.
I do still have upholstered furniture wrapped in plastic. When 19 months pass since I saw the last bed bug, I will remove it. I wish I had known about the cinnamon, my kids would have appreciated that.
Within my first 10 days of panic, I bombed the house, and then lay DE all over the floor. Both were very bad ideas and in response to feeling desperate. My son did not breathe well with the DE (he has asthma) on the floor. My kids are older so I was not concerned about them ingesting the silica litter. In the containers placed under furniture legs it poses no harm compared to DE constantly being disturbed into the air.
We read some funny writings, it helped to laugh. The guy that wrote about the cat litter wrote that he missed his bed bugs, and, like him, I still have about half a bag (was $11.00) of the litter left.
