Bed bugs… those reddish-brown, irksome bloodsucking, oval-shaped pests that cause so much discomfort with just one bite that leaves you with welts and your skin swollen where you were bitten.
Most people severely dislike them and will do everything in the world to eliminate them if found. Unfortunately, squashing them does leave a reddish-brown mess that can discolor your beautiful walls, floors, and beddings.
Worse still, you never can tell if you’ve gotten everyone of them. The best thing to do therefore, would be to prevent them from getting into the home.
Tips for Preventing Bed Bugs from Getting into the House
• Inspect the pets’ sleeping areas
• Check for them in tiny crevices in the bed
• Vacuum your suitcase and all its content upon returning from vacations. This is important because there is an increasing prevalence of bedbugs in hotels
• Check the bed for blood spots –usually red-brown blood- and maybe their carcasses
• If you’re buying secondhand furniture, beddings, and clothing, make sure to look for the signs of bed bugs in them.
• Check for bed bugs in the tiny edges of your cushions, beddings, and chairs. They tend to hide in those very tiny parts.
• If you’ve got clutter in your home, now is the time to get rid of them. Clutter means more places for them to hide in-and we don’t want them hiding in our stuff.
• If you use a shared laundry facility, transfer all laundered clothes directly into a plastic bag –preferably a new one. Don’t fold while you’re at the laundromat as they could latch onto your clothes while you’re doing that.
• Pay attention to cracks in the walls, around sockets and other parts of the house where they can hide.
• Always check the children’s clothing for bed bugs. Children could easily get them from other kids in school or on the playground.
Tips for Eliminating Them if They’re already in the home
• However, if your preventative measures are ineffective and you find that you have an infestation, it’s time to pull out the big guns and start wiping them out.
• Start with using heat. Simply place all clothes in the dryer and turn the dryer up to the highest possible temperature. Leave the clothes there for at least 30 minutes.
• You could also put everything in the fridge and set the temperature to zero degrees. Extreme cold also kills them.
• Wrap up all the clothing materials and every other thing and leave them out in the very hot sun –this would be particularly effective during the summer. The same applies to your beddings. Bring them out and leave them in the sun, preferably on a slab.
• Hire pest control experts like Heron Pest to come clear out all the bed bugs plus every other bug in your home. This is still the most effective and guaranteed long lasting solution to exterminating the critters.
• You could also apply insecticides, but make sure that the insecticides are EPA approved and do not contain compounds that you or your kids might be allergic to.
Bed bugs don’t have to rule your life and make it miserable. Apply all these tips and your home will be bed bug free in no time. As crazy as it might sound, there’s always the tendency to want to use fires or foggers. Please don’t.
Just follow the outlined tips several times –say every week for a month- and you’ll completely wipe out their population. If you did the smart thing and hired a company like Heron pest control of Orlando, you will get them all the first time and never have to worry about checking if they are completely gone.