LIMA — Sarah and her family have had their share of hardships, but this year has been especially difficult for her children.
Last winter, she and her family unknowingly moved into a home infested with bed bugs. It wasn’t long before Sarah and her two daughters began noticing the blood-sucking insects.
“Once we started seeing them, we told the landlord and he wouldn’t do nothing,” Sarah said.
With no help from her landlord and not enough money to pay an exterminator, Sarah began purchasing bed bug spray every week to try to rid her home of the pesky insects.
Sarah said she spent nearly $300 on spray, exhausting all the money she had that was not being spent on bills.
Even the bud beg spray itself became a problem for Sarah.
“It wasn’t an easy thing to do because I have bronchitis,” she said. “It was a situation where I’d spray, get out of the room, spray, and so on. I was trying not to have an attack.”
Sarah said she tried for months to rid her home of bed bugs, but her efforts proved futile.
“I tried my hardest to get rid of them, but then one day we ended up tearing out a wall and found them all crawling in this one wall in the house,” she said. “That was it for me.”
Sarah and her daughters now live in a new home that is free of bed bugs. Although she’s removed herself from the infested home, Sarah still had to get rid of most of her furniture, including her daughter’s beds.
The girls have been rotating between padded blankets, a mattress left in the home by a previous owner, a couch donated by Sarah’s mother and a chair, also donated.
Though her oldest daughter is only 11 years old, Sarah said she is mature enough to understand the situation they are in.
“She hates it, but she says, ‘mom, we gotta do what we gotta do, and I’m sticking with you,’” she said. “She takes a lot after me.”
Sarah and her daughters have tried to make the most of their situation. The small, pink Christmas tree that sits in their living room will soon be decorated, not by ornaments and tinsel from the store, but by handmade decorations the family can afford.
With no one to babysit her children, Sarah has not been able to work. And with no job and a bank account still reeling from the cost of bed beg repellent, there is not much money left for Christmas presents.
Though Sarah said her daughters understand that money is tight, she still wants to provide them with a special Christmas.
“They’ve been through so much this year that they deserve to have a great Christmas,” she said.
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