I wrote a post almost six months ago and said I’d give an update on whether what we did worked or not. So here it is.
A little background: We moved into an apartment in June that was infested with brown carpet beetles. When we arrived, there were dead beetles everywhere. We tried professional treatment with steam cleaning, but it didn’t work. In the end, we decided to move.
Before moving, we froze all of our belongings for almost two weeks in a freezer trailer at -27°C.
We’ve now been living in the new apartment since December, and honestly, it has felt so freeing. I could finally keep my clothes in the closet instead of living out of bags. I stopped constantly watching where I stepped. I could wear my leather slippers and leave them beside the bed overnight without worrying. Just small things like that have felt amazing these past months.
The illusion shattered yesterday while I was eating lunch. There it was in the window: a beetle. All the red flags and little “signs” I had noticed, the ones I kept dismissing as some kind of PTSD/OCD from the previous infestation, turned out to be real.
But after taking a closer look, it didn’t quite match the brown carpet beetles we had before (Attagenus smirnovi). It was very similar, but smaller and had a thin white stripe. After a lot of research, I found out it’s actually Reesa vespulae.
So the freezing process worked perfectly! Unfortunately, we just moved into a place with a different species.
We can’t move again, so now I’ve bought insecticide spray, diatomaceous earth, traps, cedarwood, and lavender (I don’t know if any of it works?). I also plan to buy sealant for the cracks under the baseboards.
The only positive thing is that these beetles are apparently more known for feeding on dead insects than clothes, so I’m not stuffing all my clothes back into bags just yet.
Still, this has definitely been a huge setback. And maybe the people who say these beetles exist in 90% of homes are right after all.