AKA: How Bedbugs Ruined my Low Impact Consumption Month.

Last week, in the ecstatic throes of the prospect of moving out of my NYU dorm and into my very first apartment (in Gramercy!), I awoke one morning in my dorm, three days before I was to move to my new apartment, to find about fifteen mysterious bites marching up and down my calves, ankles, and neck. These were no ordinary bug bites; they were red, angry, unrelenting welts that not only itched but HURT. I searched the sheets and the mattress and couldn’t find any evidence of bed bugs, but the next day after waking up at 6am to find that five more bites had surfaced on my ankles in the characteristic “breakfast, lunch, dinner” pattern that bedbugs tend to leave, I marched myself to the dermatologist. To my dismay, he confirmed my suspicions, apologetically:

“Wash all your fabrics – clothes, sheets, everything – in really hot water. Throw out everything else fabric that can’t be washed. Inspect everything, and put everything else in plastic bags.”

Crap.

This sucked because:

1) I was not going to be using plastic bags this month, and because of this,

2) I don’t HAVE ANY PLASTIC BAGS.

I found myself irrationally angry at Ethan (sorry Ethan) for putting me up to this in the first place. Damn do-gooder-help-the-planet-smarty-pants-whatever. I bet HE doesn’t have bedbugs. I have since mentally forgiven Ethan for his part in this bedbug fiasco, even though it is, obviously, all his fault.

For about fifteen minutes I felt like a moron who was being played a trick on by that bully known as Irony. And then I bared my teeth, rolled up my sleeves, went to Duane Reade and bought a box of plastic garbage bags. As a small consolation to myself, I refused the cashier’s plastic bag and put the box in my purse. Slightly ridiculous, I know, but that’s me.

I had to use the plastic bags, of course. There was no getting around it. I was not going to risk my beautiful, brand new Sleepy’s mattress that was waiting for me at my apartment being infested. I also had to weigh in the waste factor of maybe having to get rid of ALL of my stuff if I didn’t get these fabrics in plastic bags pronto; if bedbugs lay their eggs in my pillows, or my socks, or my drapes, everything in my apartment will have to go. So out went all my old sheets and blankets, I plastic bagged all of my clothes and sent them to the cleaners, carefully inspected and sprayed every other belonging I own with Lysol, and threw out everything that was stored under my bed. I never realized how much STUFF I have, and how I really didn’t want to get rid of some of it:

But…I love that comforter – I’ve had it since freshman year.

That’s my favorite pair of socks, they’re so comfy…

That suitcase went with me to London, I can’t throw it away.

All the memories I had of the items I had to get rid of made it very difficult to accept the reality of having to toss them in the trash. I can’t lie – it was very distressing. Not to mention finding myself drowning in a sea of black plastic garbage bags. Why couldn’t bedbugs live in plastic instead, and be repelled by fabrics and paper? Bedbugs really aren’t very environmentally conscious. Maybe bedbugs are Republicans.

Emily tries to get image of George W. Bush and John McCain heads with bedbug bodies out of her mind. Fails.

I was disappointed by the notion that I actually did need plastic bags for something. I was faced with a foe that truly could not be conquered without these things that I was supposed to be totally against this month. I suppose it shows that nothing, not even a plastic bag, is 100% bad. Except for bedbugs. Bedbugs are jerks.

Let that rock your environmentally conscious world. And please send money via PayPal to the newly found charity, “HERS,” AKA, “Help Emily Replace Stuff.”