I suspect that each and every person who goes through a bird mite (or indeed other mite, bedbug, etc.) infestation develops their own protocol to deal with that infestation. When we found ourselves in this horrible situation, I scoured the internet for advice. If you've landed here because you're undergoing a similar experience, you have my utmost sympathy. But please know, you can help yourself. Contrary to the information on a certain other website out there, you do not have to accept years of torment. You can get through this and come out the other side. It will take some commitment, courage, energy, money, hard work and sheer bloody mindedness ... but it can be done.
Give yourself permission to freak out. I think there'd be something wrong with you if you didn't freak out. But after you've freaked out, roll up your sleeves because there's work to be done!
The first thing to do is to identify and get rid of the source of your infestation. How did the mites get in your home? Is there a nest attached to your house? Have birds got into your loft or attic? Do you keep chickens? Have you brought something into your home which may have come from an infested place?
Acquire some dehumidifiers. Whether they are electric or just the absorbent 'pot' kind, get some dehumidifying going on in every single room in your home.
Now you need to clean. Your aim is to make both yourself and your environment as inhospitable to mites as possible. If you have a house with a lot of clutter, you are just giving the mites lots and lots of places to hide, so you need to get rid of things which you don't really need. This is an exercise in simplifying your home - the less you have in it, the easier it is to keep clean. You can sprinkle DE powder in corners of rooms, on windowsills, along skirting boards, etc. Take care not to inhale the DE powder as it can damage your lungs. If you know the direction from which the mites are coming, put DE powder there: It dries out the mites and damages their exoskeleton. Some websites advise cleaning with bleach, but since you are going to use ammonia in your washing, it makes sense not to use bleach - if you accidentally mix them in any way, you will be releasing harmful gases in your home. Instead, use ammonia-based cleaners such as Dettol, Astonish, and other generic cleaners with ammonia compounds. Cleaners which contain citrus oils are good - Astonish do one with orange oil, and I still buy that and use it. Use microfibre cloths to do your cleaning, and wash them on the same hot wash as everything else you put in the washing machine. If you have hard floors, keep them very clean with the same cleaners. If you have carpets, clean them with a vacuum cleaner every day. If you have a bagless vacuum cleaner, wash the plastic chamber out thoroughly with the cleaners mentioned above. If you have a bagged cleaner, add some drops of tea tree or thyme oil to the bag. In either case, keep the head of the cleaner in a plastic bag which contains drops of oils and tie the bag when the vacuum cleaner's not in use. I cleaned every day to start with, and only when the bites were right down to a handful a week did I start to allow myself the odd day without thorough cleaning.
Textiles need washing and bagging up - that means clothes, bedding, curtains, fabric decorations, towels, bathmats, shower curtains, canvas shoes. Wash them all on at least 60°. If you have a drier, dry them on the hottest heat setting. At no stage leave anything textile lying around the house. Once they are washed, they go in a sealed plastic bag. I had a big plastic sack for things which needed ironing (in fact I still do) and it stayed tied until each item was taken out to iron. I read on lots of websites that people recommended steaming textiles to kill mites. I understand why - the theory being that the heat of steam will kill them. But steam is also humid, and mites love humidity. I exchanged emails with Dr Sparagano, and he advised me to use a hot, dry iron on anything which needed ironing - so that's what I did. As soon as it was ironed, it went into a plastic bag and was sealed. (I bought freezer bags from supermarkets for this job.) What worked best for me was putting a whole outfit into a bag, so when I wanted to wear it, I could just pick up a bag and know everything was there. Wear your clothes only once before they get washed again (the same goes for towels and bedding). When you take them off at the end of the day, put them in a sealed plastic bag until you put them in the washing machine. You need to make it difficult for the mites to go anywhere to hide and by putting textiles in sealed plastic bags, you are stopping them going anywhere other than in that bag. Once you've emptied the bag into the washing machine, dispose of the bag in the dustbin immediately. When it comes to bedding, I found a sleeping bag on a plastic mattress was far more practical. I only had to wash a sleeping bag every day instead of stripping a whole bed. I'd wipe down the mattress with one of the cleaners I used, and wash the sleeping bag on 60°, then dry it on the hottest setting on the drier. This really helped.
I know you're tired from all the cleaning, washing and ironing - not to mention the lack of sleep, stress and worry - but now you need to go swimming. Chlorinated water is wonderful when you're fighting mites. I didn't start going swimming until we left the infested house, but for three months, until the bites stopped, I went every day. I could only manage 20 minutes before I got out (the water in our local pool is cold!) but I kept going. Once I stopped getting bites, I dropped my visits to four or five times a week. Now the crawling sensations have stopped, I am still going four times a week because I believe it's one of the strongest mite-fighting weapons I have, and if I unwittingly introduce a mite or two when I get something out of storage, they won't survive on skin that has been (and is going to be) in chlorine. When you swim, don't wear a swimming hat, or goggles or a noseclip, or earplugs. You want the chlorine to go everywhere. Keep going underwater, and make sure that water gets in every orifice! Chlorine will dry out your skin, but as we know, mites don't like dry conditions. When I first started going swimming, I didn't shower off the chlorine, I didn't wash my hair. I didn't rub myself dry with a towel; I patted myself dry, and just combed my hair and left it to dry with chlorine in it (which is awful for your hair's condition, but you can sort that out at a later time, when you are mite-free).
I chose to swim in the middle of the day. I figured that if I got up and had a shower with a shower scrub, it would then only be a few hours before I went swimming, and then only another few hours before I had a bath. Each one of those activities was anti-mite, and I didn't want to give them time to reproduce in between anti-mite treatments. My shower in the morning would consist of using a long-handled plastic brush, onto which I'd put neem oil, epsom salts, a couple of other oils from my list (see the 'Helpful Products' tab) and eucalyptus shower gel or sulphur shampoo. I would work that thoroughly into my skin and leave it on whilst I washed my hair with one or more of the shampoos listed on my products page. Then I'd wash off the scrub mixture. If I had time, I'd try to air-dry, but sometimes there just wasn't time. After I was dry, I'd apply some thing to my skin - either my aqueous cream/oil mixture, or Naturasil Sulphur Cream. After a while, I started alternating my morning shower with a morning wash, for which I used Naturasil Sulphur and Lavender soap: washed myself all over with it, and left it on my skin.
My evening bath was one of the few times in the day I could relax. I would try to stay in there for at least 20-30 minutes, and read a book (the book was kept in a sealed plastic bag for the other 23½ hours a day). For four nights I would add Naturasil anti-scabies Sulphur drops and a tablespoon of coconut oil. For the next four nights I would add Epsom Salts, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and a tablespoon of coconut oil, then revert back to the sulphur drops, and so on. Again, I would try to air dry my skin, and after it was dry, I would rub something on it. That could have been my essential oil/aqueous cream mix, or coconut oil, Vaseline, or even Vick's Vaporub. I found it better not to keep using the same things all the time.
Mites are relentless, so that's what you have to be in fighting them, but if you are stubborn and persistent you can do it. Unfortunately it's something we can only do for ourselves, nobody else can do it for us.
I wish you luck and good health. x
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