War Against the Carpet Beetles

the Mother's Day present I didn't ask for

So funny that in my last Distracted by piece I mocked Mother’s day for the silly drawings from nursery we receive from our children, and the forced crafting together sessions, when all we want is time away from them. Funny because it was this year that I got my wish.

Not because I was at a spa, you must understand, or out with friends for a glass of wine in the sun or doing anything pleasant at all. No.

I was hoovering every inch of my house in search for Carpet Beetles while my children played blissfully unaware downstairs.

I had never heard of these ghastly things before a couple of weeks ago, and now they plague my every waking moment.

Every piece of fluff on the floor, every fly darting across the room - is that one??
Are they gone??

When I first spotted them I dismissed them as another “bug from the plants”. Because I have accumulated quite a few houseplants now and every few weeks there is something new about them I hadn’t considered. Winter and overwatering often leads to flies taking residence in a few of the less thirsty ones. I have got used to various flies making their way round the room as I worked, or landing on my pillow. I had thought this tiny miniature discoloured lady bird I had found on the bed not far from my Boston Fern was one of them, but no.

No this was a Carpet Beetle.

Whilst they are harmless and mostly only after natural fibres to feed on, I have discovered that the rashes my youngest son and I seem to be getting around our neck and shoulders could be down to them. Some people are allergic to them. But the rash was something I had also brushed off as just another skin thing I would ignore until it went away.

I wasn’t overly bothered about them at all, really. I thought I didn’t have any natural fibres to offer and it is not a secret that I hate the carpet upstairs anyway. But after a google session one evening and another sighting, I suddenly thought about my Wool Collection sat in our bedroom underneath the window - a potential entrance for unwanted visitors. Underneath all my “might wear again tomorrow” clothes, which now covered in traces of bugs, may be causing this rash. They couldn’t be right there, could they? Right under my nose?

I jumped up at the thought, my skin itching.

Now my wool collection is meagre, sad almost, compared to someone like my Mum who has an entire room filled with wool. I have a few balls, and a couple of unfinished projects tucked away in a wicker basket with the intention that I might get back to them one day.

Wicker basket.

With the children and my partner occupied by the bath-time routine, I ran into the bedroom, opened the wicker basket slowly and peeked inside. There they were.

Every ball covered in these tiny sandy dots, little flying insects nibbling away. They were everywhere. Most balls were in tact as much of my wool isn’t wool at all but acrylic, but one piece I identified as belonging to actual expensive wool that I used to knit a luxuriously large and cosy cardigan a few years ago was eaten through and the wicker basket it was stored in was chomped and nibbled.

Once this was in the bin and out of the house, I spent a sleepless night planning my excavation of the entire house, which I had to enact the following morning. Any other weekend plans were suddenly undone.

My poor partner didn’t know what had hit him as I mentioned I was going up to do the hoovering after breakfast, emerging some 4 hours later to ask him to move our bed so I could hoover underneath and apologise for breaking the chest of drawers when I tried to move that on my own. “You haven’t stopped hoovering,” he said.

Whilst he hoovered under the bed, I sat with the kids and I could see the they were frustrated with being kept in with no real clue why. I urged him to take them out without me so I could finish, not really knowing how long it would take.

I spent the entire day searching, hoovering, ridding the house of any poorly stored food, natural fibres - I checked every piece of clothing, one by one, every shoe. I kept going until I couldn’t any more.

Around 3pm that day, my bones and muscles ached all over - I didn't have any more to look at, nothing left to hoover. I was done.

I collapsed on the sofa but I had this strange, unfamiliar feeling.

I missed my boys.

It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon and they had gone for a walk and I wanted nothing more than to hang out with them. I rang my partner and located the three of them entering the estate where we live and I went to meet them. I managed to convince them to walk with me to the corner shop where we treated ourselves to a pre-dinner chocolate bar, our eldest walking home holding my hand, telling me about all the things he had done that day. In the sunshine, with my family, the carpet beetles were suddenly far from my thoughts.

It really is true that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

I joke and joke that I can’t bear my kids and often I do mean it, too. I enjoy time away from them, but I want it on my terms. I had barely seen them all week with school and nursery and then I was chained to the house in a sort of cleaning frenzy with unwanted guests hijacking the day. Until the middle of the afternoon I had let them, but I am glad the day didn’t completely disappear and we got a few nice moments together as a family before bath time rolled around again.

It was not the Mother’s Day weekend I had hoped for but still, it’s nice to have those reminders every now and then that it’s the uneventful moments that are special - that what makes us happy is right there in front of us - we just have to see it.

What did you get up to for Mother’s Day?

Come join me in the comments, I would love to hear your stories and know I am not alone!

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