My girlfriend and I have been getting bit for a while now, only recently (last night) actually seeing a bedbug. We found a few of them. What methods work best for getting rid of these little monsters?

Here are the facts: We live downstairs in the basement. It has a false ceiling (the grid type with the 2'x4' tiles) and carpet. The furniture in it has some oldish looking fabric chair and couch set, which we're probably going to remove. I've got my wooden desk, a wooden TV stand, a computer tower and another smaller TV stand (which are being used as a bookshelf) and that's it.

The layout downstairs is pretty simple, the room I'm in is a pretty long one, with another room attached to it, which is being used as a storage room. There's the door to our room which leads out into the hallway with the staircase, there's a bathroom down here, and there's a storage room under the stairwell with access to it from the bathroom. There's also the other bedroom next to our long one. There is a space in between it all that has the water heater and furnace in it, most of the area is studs.

We haven't been having a problem with anything or anyone upstairs. There are cats down here that don't get allowed upstairs unless the dogs are put outside. This happens probably once or twice a week.

Anyone have any recommendations?

My girlfriends' parents are going through some troubles with funds right now. They're facing losing the house which means we'll all have to move. Her dad has a job, but the reason it's so tight is because he's got a job that is reliant on quality weather, and it hasn't been so great lately. So we can't even think about spending the money to get a professional sprayer out here to spray. And even if we could, there's animals living here that we have no space or way to put them elsewhere.

So yeah, no improvements...