Bed bug infestations continue to increase every year, and this can pose a stressful problem if your home becomes infected. Bed bug bites can cause rashes, itchiness, and possible severe allergic reactions depending on how your body reacts to a bite. Unfortunately, humans can not feel a bed bug biting them, so you can be resting peacefully, but wake up covered in rashes!
It is very common for bed bugs to invade your home after they latch onto your luggage while you are on vacation. Here is a step-by-step guide to make sure you do not take bed bugs home when you return from travelling!
Inspect Hotel Room for Bed Bugs
- Always place your luggage bag on a rack with steel legs in your hotel room. Steel is too slick for bed bugs to climb.
- Temporarily remove the sheets from the bed and inspect the piping on the mattress for bed bugs and insects.
- After you have inspected the mattress, inspect the bed’s headboard and the nightstands.
With these steps, you can prevent bringing home bedbugs from vacation.
Preventing Bed Bugs When You Return Home
In case you may have not seen bed bugs in your hotel room, here is another process to make sure there are none on your luggage when you do return home. Remember, never unpack your bags in a bed room or living room of any kind.
- Take your luggage bags with everything inside of it into your garage. If you do not have a garage, take it into the kitchen or an outside parking lot.
- Take all of the clothing you took for travelling, including the clothes you are wearing once you get home, and place it all inside a plastic bag.
- Take the bag directly to the washer and wash all clothes, even if they were unused. If the clothing travelled, WASH IT. Use the highest temperature water and drier setting that you can use without ruining your clothing.
- Go back to your empty suitcase and vacuum it both inside and out to remove bed bugs.
- Dispose the vacuum bag in a trash can that is outside. If the vacuum is bagless, dump the contents of the vacuum in a trash can outside.
- For further precautions, put alcohol on a cotton ball, and rub the cotton ball on narrow crevices of your luggage that your vacuum could not go in between.
For anything you can’t wash (ex. shoes), place it in a bag and leave the bag in a garage or out in the sun for a minimum of one day in order to kill the bed bugs. High temperatures kill bed bugs. If you can’t find a high temperature location to place the bag, carefully inspect the items for bed bugs before you place them in your home.
Never place luggage or clothes on your bed.
For a visual demonstration, here is a video: