The bugs and their eggs could be in anything in the apartment made of fabric or wood. Here’s how long the bugs can live without food: eighteen months. There is no way we could starve them. We had to poison them. And the only way to do that is to get them to come out of hiding and walk through the poison. The only thing they’ll come out for is human blood.

How would they get human blood? We had to live in the apartment. What do people on Park Avenue do? The staff lives there while the family goes to the summer home or a hotel. What do the not-rich people do? Use themselves as bait. That’s what our neighbors did.

We tried using ourselves as bait for one night, and every bug (by now there were forty or fifty a night) went for the kids. I developed near complete insomnia, always fearing that the kids were getting bitten as soon as I shut my eyes, even in broad daylight when the bugs are asleep.

The bed bug expert said that the most common thing he sees is that people move, but they won’t give up their stuff, so they take the bedbugs with them. We had two kids bitten everywhere. We took no chances and we took with us only things that could be boiled in hot in water or thrown in a hot dryer - to ensure no bugs. We took from that apartment less than half of the size of a small U-Haul truck. We left almost everything.

Nota bene: people on Park Avenue who flee to vacation homes and leave staff to sleep in their infested apartments are probably going to infest their vacation homes. Those of us who empathize with the staff in that scenario are calling that karma.

While it is surely easier if you have the means to leave it all behind and start again, nevertheless, it takes a certain frame of mind. For those of you assuming Trunk’s family then re-accumulated all the stuff they left behind: the point of the article is that’s not what they did. Instead, they learned what they needed and did more with less. And apparently this was not because, as for some Bedbuggers, they’re afraid of reinfestation.

It’s not a how-to for everyone, but if, like me, you find voluntary simplicity appealing, you might find it kind of inspiring.

• Toronto tenants camping in parking lot rather than sleep in bed bug-infested unit
• Yet more people who are yet to discover bed bugs exist
• Word of bed bugs is spreading
• Stanford: stop those bed bugs! Here’s what you need to do.

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