After a holiday, one souvenir you don’t want to bring back with you are bed bugs.
Leaving you with itchy bites, bed bugs will infest your home at a rapid rate. Failing to check your hotel room before unpacking can mean these bugs stowaway in your clothes and hitchhike home with you.
Where you stay doesn’t make a difference. Without proper checks, bed bugs are easily transferred between travellers and will go on to infest all kinds of hotels. From budget motels, to luxury stays.
So, follow this quick checklist to make sure your home stays bed bug free this summer.
Quick scan of the room
Check for bed bugs as soon as you enter your hotel room, before unpacking your luggage. Set your bags on a luggage rack, or put them in the bathroom, away from soft furnishings.
With the flashlight on your phone, pull back the bedding and do a thorough check of both sides of the mattress. Scan the seams of the mattress and bedding for ink-like dots, rusty smears or live bugs.
The full room check
For a more in-depth check, run through these steps to guarantee the whole room is infestation free.
- Store your luggage
Place your luggage on a hard surface or a luggage rack. If the rack has fabric straps, make sure you check the stitching and straps for dark spots or live bugs before you put your bags down.
- Check the mattress
Strip the bedding off of the mattress, and run a flashlight along the seams, piping and tufts. Look for small, brown bugs, tiny black specks and translucent shed skin. Lift a corner of the mattress, check underneath, and the bedframe itself.
- Headboard and hardware
Even when the headboard isn’t upholstered, you should still take a look along the mounting brackets, screw holes, and decorative trim. Small, shaded areas can be used by bed bugs as shelter.
- Bedside furniture and soft furnishings
Have a look inside the nightstand drawers, undersides and joints. As well as any furniture that’s placed close to the bed. If there’s any soft chairs or sofas, pinch the seams to properly inspect the fabric. Don’t forget the curtain hems near the bed and the baseboard line.
- Closets
Do a quick check in any closets or clothes storage. Not forgetting the corners. When you’ve checked everything is clean you can unpack and settle in.
What to do if you see signs of bed bugs
If you see signs of bed bugs in any of the above places:
- Keep the luggage closed.
- Take pictures of what you saw and where.
- Leave the room with your belongings and ask for a new room that is not next to, above or below the previous one.
- Check the new room for any sign of bed bugs.
- If you had begun to unpack in the infested room, place the items into sealed bags until you can apply heat treatment to them.
Prevent their return flight
Make sure you don’t bring any bed bugs into your home by:
- Storing worn and clean clothes in separate zip bags.
- When you return, keep luggage on a hard floor, in the garage, or a wash room.
- Where appropriate, dry the fabrics on a high heat for at least 30 minutes before washing, then wash hot, and dry fully. Heat is great for getting rid of both bed bug eggs and adults.
- Vacuum suitcase seams and pockets, and empty the vacuum outside of your home.
- In between trips, keep the luggage stored away from bedrooms.
Have you got bed bugs?
The biggest tell-tale sign of bed bugs are the itchy bites they leave you with. But bites look different for everyone. Sometimes they appear as lines, clusters or welts, and some people have no marks at all.
Small black dots appearing on your bedding may also be a sign. A bed bug’s fecal matter looks like tiny black dots that bleed into the fabric of your cover or duvet. Eggs are small, white, and usually laid in the crevices and cracks of your bed.
Bed bugs cannot fly or jump. They have to crawl, so if you suspect you have got bed bugs, isolate the bedding and clear everything away from the bed immediately.
You can apply DIY treatments if you’re confident the infestation is confined to one room.
But if in doubt, call a professional exterminator to administer bed bug treatment and get your home back to normal.
Final thoughts
Bed bugs are tricky to handle, so it’s important you take the necessary precautions when travelling. It’s easy to bring bed bugs into your home but it’s not so easy to get them out.
In the scenario where bed bugs do infest your home, it’s best to call a professional right away to make sure your home will be completely infestation-free.