If you wake up with welts on your legs and body, and small blood spots on your sheets, you likely have some unwanted guests living with you: bed bugs. Is it worth leaving the room and going elsewhere?Â
Do bed bugs follow you to another room if you sleep somewhere else?
- It’s usually not worth switching rooms in an active infestation, the bed bugs will follow you
- This activity can actually spread the bugs and make them harder to eradicate
- If you’re in a hotel, switch to a different room immediately.
It can take a while to get rid of bed bugs — they can live for a year before they starve. During the remediation, you’re gonna need to sleep somewhere, even with bed bugs around.
Read on to learn how to live with bed bugs while you’re trying to get rid of them!
Do Bed Bugs Follow You to Another Room?
If you find that you have bed bugs in your home, there are a few things you should avoid doing. Here they are:
1. Don’t Try to Play the Part of The Exterminator
When you realize you have these small bugs in your bed, your first reaction should not go for the anti- parasites and insecticides advertised to be effective in killing 100% of the bugs in your home.
Often, the opposite is true.Â
What insecticides do is repel the bugs, but it does not kill them. Unfortunately, this means that the bed bugs will relocate from your bedroom to another room, resettling there. This will make your infestation worse.
2. Don’t Change Rooms
You might be wondering why you should not change rooms, but the truth is, bed bugs crawl; therefore, they will crawl from room to room, along crevices in the walls to find the most habitable place, and that will most likely be wherever they can smell CO2 exhaled (and blood), as you provide a tasty meal for them.
Therefore, changing rooms is not advisable as this will cause new infestations in other rooms.
This happens when someone moves things like linens, handbags, books, cardboard boxes, and backpacks.
The bed bugs may be hiding in these places, so you will move on to the next room with them. They can even survive inside vacuum-sealed packaging for months.
What if it’s a hotel?
If you’re in a hotel or AirBnB, you should immediately inform the hosts that you have found evidence of bed bugs. You may want to choose a different place to stay altogether. But depending on the hotel, you could choose to move to a room as far from the infested room as possible.
3. Consider Throwing Away Mattresses and Furniture
It can become frustrating when you have tried everything to get rid of the bugs, but still, they are holding on for dear life!
You’ll usually need a professional bed bug exterminator to help you with your problem. The exterminator may suggest you hold onto your mattress and treat it, but often it’s easier to just toss it, as well as furniture.
This depends on the value of the furniture, and the cost to treat everything (along with the risks that treatment doesn’t work!).Â
What To Do When You Find Bed Bugs in Your Bed
Below are the steps to take if you have confirmed that there are bed bugs in your bed (and other furnishings):
1. Call the Exterminator
The exterminator will inspect all areas of your home to ensure that the bed bugs have not spread from your bedroom.Â
The first treatment is applied throughout your house. The exterminator might tell you to remove all your furniture from the house.
The second treatment is crucial and applied three weeks after the first one. This is because the eggs laid by the bed bugs before the first treatment have hatched.
2. Seal Your Things
It is important to seal all your clothes, textiles, and other items in your bedroom by using plastic bags and leaving them outside the bedroom. This is important as it will make the exterminator’s work of treating the room easier.Â
3. Notify Your Landlord (If You Have One)
The landlord has to ensure that all houses are free from pests. Therefore, if you’re a tenant, you should notify them of the bed bug infestation in your home.
This will help reduce the cost of paying for extermination services.Â
4. Wash Your Textiles in Boiling Water and Dry Hot
Heat is one of the worst enemies of bed bugs, and you should use that information to your advantage! Boil your clothes and other textiles at around 60 degrees Celsius as this ideal temperature kills bed bugs.
Heat is one of the worst enemies of bed bugs, and you should use that information to your advantage.
A laundromat that has large dryers and wasters is the most convenient place for washing your pillows and blankets.
After doing so, dry them in the sun if it’s summertime, and you’re good to go.
How To Prevent Another Bed Bug Infestation
There are tips you can abide by to ensure you do not have a recurrent bed bug infestation.
First, you should inspect the second-hand items you purchase, like furniture and clothes. This is because bed bugs can hide almost anywhere, so you should be thorough when buying second-hand items.
Purchasing a high-quality encasement can be a worthwhile investment. The encasement will be handy when using it as a protective cover for your mattress to eliminate hiding spots for bed bugs. Moreover, it would help if you looked for a lighter color encasement, making it easier to spot the bed bugs.
Reducing clutter and dirt is also important in reducing bed bug infestation. This is because cluttered areas create conducive hiding places for bed bugs.Â
Not every person can afford a laundry facility, which necessitates the need for shared laundry machines. Therefore, you should be vigilant when it comes to sharing laundry facilities. It is recommended to transport your clothes in plastic bags.
If your house has ever been infested, especially your bedroom, you should regularly wash and heat-dry your bedspreads, blankets, bed sheets, and any clothing that touches the floor. This will reduce the bed bug infestation as they can hide in your laundry.
If your house has ever been infested, regularly wash bedspreads, blankets, bed sheets, and clothing that touches the floor.
Vacuum cleaning your home once in a while is crucial. This is because the machine can dislodge the bugs from their hiding places into the machine.Â
Conclusion
Bed bugs can make your life miserable. They are very difficult to eradicate, and it can take up to a year to be sure they’re all gone.
It will not take a lot of effort as long as you let the professionals do their job: that is what they are good at.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite any more.
