My Independence Day Nightmare!! And How I Got Out of It!!

 

 

Well, the weekend is over and it’s back to the grindstone. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. Ours was mostly great, except for the day I woke up to a nightmare!!

Thursday morning, the 4^th of July, I got up a little late. We went to a baseball game the night before and didn’t get in until well after bedtime. I went down to the kitchen to make some coffee and start breakfast. At some point I looked down and saw a couple of little worms on the floor. “That’s weird,” I thought, as I got a paper towel to clean them up. When I bent over to pick them up I saw more, and more and more. I needed something more than a paper towel.

Apparently, I threw something out the morning before that attracted flies to my garbage can. Those flies decided to make offspring which caused half of the bottom floor of my house to be infested with maggots. This was truly a nightmare.

Once I realized what was happening, I threw out my trashcan. The whole thing! Luckily it was garbage day.  Who knew garbage men in Nevada ran on holidays? I vacuumed every little creature I could find. I was on a hunt.

I Google searched how to kill the little rodents and almost cried. There was a picture on the bottom of the page of an iron, telling me how to make them come up out of the carpet. The carpet? You mean they will get into your carpet. The nightmare I thought I would be out of in a couple of hours now looked like an all-day extravaganza!! This is not how I wanted to spend my Independence Day!

Well, I didn’t cry. I got to work. We had a BBQ to attend at 4:30 and I was determined to be rid of all of these little things before we had to be there.

I started with the kitchen and the pantry (where my garbage can usually resides). I removed everything from the pantry, vacuumed and cleaned with vinegar. I cleaned everything that came out and put it back in. Then I vacuumed the kitchen, then swept, then mopped with vinegar (including under the appliances). I got on my hands and knees looking for them and there was nothing in sight.

I also boiled a couple of big pots of water. I poured the water in my large garbage can, over and in the maggot infested one.

The carpet was the game changer. I didn’t see anything in the carpet. Was I even sure they had gotten that far? So I pulled out my clothes steamer (it is a little more user friendly than a steam iron) and tested it. Running steam over the carpet makes them poke their little heads out. OMGoodness!! There were maggots in my carpet!! This is one of the most horrifying things that has happened to me as a homemaker!! I'll take dishes and diapers anyday!!

Luckily, my husband gave me a Shark steam mop a few years back for Christmas. It really saved a lot of time. I steam mopped my carpets, a couple of feet at a time and waited for the little suckers to come up out of my carpet. Then, with a gloved hand, I threw them in a mop bucket of pure white vinegar. This was incredibly time consuming and actually made me sore the next day!! However, it was worth it, because I got almost every one of those little guys out of my carpet!!

After that, just to be sure, I cleaned all of the edges and corners (seems to be where they like to hang out, I didn’t find any in the middle of my floor) of my carpet with my Bissell steam cleaner (if you ever have this problem, you can rent a Rug Doctor pretty cheaply for a day). Instead of using carpet shampoo, I used vinegar, which should kill them.

And all that seemed to do it. I cleaned all of my carpets yesterday and I only found three or four and they were dead.

There are other ways to kill these guys, but I really wanted to do it without introducing harmful chemicals to my child or my dog.  There are many chemicals that should kill them, 409, or an equivalent, and automotive chemicals. One article I read said to shampoo your carpet with lice shampoo. I would have been willing to do that if I had to, but it wasn’t my first choice.

So, what do you do when you wake up and find yourself in a nightmare, or another sort of trial? I prayed, a lot, and got to work and prayed while working. Anytime it seemed a little more hopeless, I prayed more. Then I tried to look on the brighter side. I know!! What kind of brighter side is there to finding your house infested with maggots? Well, I have needed to clean my pantry for a few weeks. I looked at it at least once a week and thought to myself that I needed to remove everything and clean. Now, I have a bright and shiny clean pantry!! Also, my carpet was looking pretty bad, it’s cheap apartment carpet and the stains show really bad. I’m trying to potty train my 2 year old and thought I might wait, since he’s probably going to pee all over the place anyhow.  Now my carpet is not only squeaky clean, it has no stains and is soft and fluffy to walk on. I may have been able to put it off if it hadn’t been for the infestation, but now my husband and I are both happier these things are clean.

Also, I really felt "I deserved" a watermelon, chocolate mint mojito at that BBQ we went to. It made the night a little sweeter after all of the work I put in.

Are you going through any trails right now? Have you turned to God to help you through them? Do you have any brighter sides? When my Dad passed away several years ago, it was unexpected and tragic. Out of that tragedy, his brother, my uncle, accepted Christ as his savior. As much as I miss my dad, I would call that a brighter side!!

I know this isn’t a “how to” you were looking forward to, but now, if you ever have this problem (I pray you don’t), you know how to take care of it fairly quickly and without harmful chemicals.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you how I got all of the stains from my carpet and made it fluffy soft, so stay tuned!!

May Your Joy Be Full,

Rachel

 

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

James 1:2,3 (ESV)

 

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