How to Avoid Bed Bugs While Traveling
It’s travel season! Whether you’re heading to grandma’s through the woods, or to your mom’s house across the pond, bed bugs are a real threat during the holidays, especially if you’re staying at a hotel.
Don’t head to a hotel for the holidays without reading this…
Bedbugs can easily hide in luggage, clothing, and other personal items, so take a few precautions while traveling to keep them from ruining your trip—or worse—coming home with you!
- As much as we all love our very own pillows, don’t bring yours with you while traveling. It gives bed bugs a perfect place to hide so they can make their way into your home. Leave your favorite pillow and blanket on your bed at home.
- Pack some large white sealable plastic garbage bags so you can separate any belongings while on the road if you do notice bugs in a hotel room or someone’s home.
- Purchase light-colored plastic luggage because bedbugs are less attracted to plastic and the lighter color makes them easier to spot. If only have dark luggage or cloth luggage, you can enclose the luggage in a white plastic garbage bag and seal it.
- When you check into your hotel room, follow these steps: 1) Do a complete inspection of the room. 2) Don’t put luggage on the bed. 3) Inspect the bed very carefully using a flashlight. 4) Check drawers and closets, also. 5) Never store anything under the bed. 6) Keep your stuff in your luggage, if you’re able to. 7) Inform hotel staff immediately if you find bed bugs.
Check out these great tips for avoiding bed bugs:
- Before you check out your hotel room’s minibar or oceanfront view, give it a thorough bedbug inspection—and until you’ve done that, stash your luggage in the loo.
- Here’s how to check for a bedbug infestation: Pull back the linens, and check all the way around and under the mattress and behind the headboard.
- Next, broaden your bedbug search to the area immediately surrounding the bed: behind picture frames, under the telephone and alarm clock, and even in books, says Johnson.
- Leaving suitcases and bags on the floor—or on a second spare bed—may be one way to bring home an unwanted souvenir, says Henriksen.
- With a little Internet research, it’s easy to find out if bedbugs have been reported at your hotel: The Bed Bug Registry, for example, is a free online database of user-submitted reports across North America. Travel sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp may also offer clues in their customer reviews.
And, if you do bring bed bugs home, you’ll want do this:
1. Find the hideouts of the bedbug: Start by finding the hideouts of the bedbugs; dismantle the bed check for any dark spots for dried bed bug excrement on the cracks and edges of wooden frames and also along mattress seams.
To avoid purchasing a new mattress and for easy inspection in future you can use a bed bug proof mattress cover to trap them inside the cover.
(It can take up to 400 days to starve them in the cover)
2. Inspect your upholstery: inspect the sofa sets and the cushions since sofas can be a major hideout especially when people sleep on them.
3. Check the walls and common places of your house: bed bugs will also find the walls, ceiling and cracks in wood moldings a nice place for them to congregate and also lay their eggs. A flashlight can be of great help to check at the dark edges.
4. Treating: There are several methods for treating and even controlling bed bugs in your premises. You can kill bed bugs by washing infested beddings and spreading hot water over the wooden beds and furniture. Hot machine wash is recommended for the clothing and for those valuable such as leather jackets you can use non-toxic bed bug sprays.
Using parathyroid insecticides are also another advisable way for treating and controlling these pests in your home. You will have to spray on the cracks crevices on the walls .You will need to spray the insecticides for several times to make sure that you kill any bed bug that could have escaped the attack and the eggs that could have hatched from the hideouts.
In serious cases like where the clothing and bedding have been infested a lot you may need to dispose those that have highly been infested to avoid recurring infest.
