Ask anyone with the hardest pests to get rid of and they will probably tell you that it’s bed bugs. These insects are incredibly tough, making them very difficult to completely eliminate from your home. You may think you’ve gotten them all as you spray pesticide and try to clean your home, but then a week or two later you find some more. With the following tips, we’re going to help you find and eliminate bed bugs wherever they may be hiding.
1. Do a Deep Clean
Bed bugs need something to eat, so you want eliminate food sources for them as much as possible. One of the best things you can do to get rid of them is to clean your home thoroughly. This not only kills and removes bedbugs, but it also helps get rid of their eggs and eliminates food sources for bedbugs too. Bed bugs eat blood, so you can’t get rid of yourself as a food source, but you can eliminate other pests in your home that bug bugs might feed off of.
If you’re trying to get these pests out of your home, you need to do more than just a regular cleaning. You’re going to have to have a penetrating and thorough cleaning done, and you may want to hire home cleaning professionals for that, just to get the best results. Doing regular cleaning can help you locate and destroy bedbugs and their eggs, so do your best to maintain a tidy home to keep these pests at bay.
2. Clean Bedding with Hot Water
The major problem with trying to kill bedbugs is that they’re incredibly tough. You can try all sorts of pesticides and pest removal methods and may still not get what kind of results you’re looking for. The bed bugs may still be alive. The only thing that kills them for sure is hot water. It has to be very hot, and because the bed bugs live in bedding primarily, you’ll want to clean your bedding in very hot water.
That’s pillowcases, sheets, blankets, and mattress covers you should be cleaning. Clean them on a regular basis so that you’re killing the bed bugs as soon as they start to spread to the bedding. This makes it really hard for them to keep their family tree going.
3. Target Their Hiding Spots
It’s not enough to clean the bedding when you’re trying to get rid of bed bugs. You also need to find other places they may be hiding out. You particularly want to eliminate the eggs, as that’s what keeps then coming back over a period of months. Where do bed bugs like to hide? They may be hidden under the edges of your mattress, hiding under the lip that runs around the sides of the mattress that you attach fitted sheets to. That’s their most common hiding spot during the day. They also hang out in couches and other soft furniture, particularly furniture that gets a lot of use. They’re looking for food sources, and they find that where people tend to hang out. Bed bugs like soft, dark places that are frequented by humans, so target those areas specifically.
4. Hire a Professional
You may not be able to get rid of bed bugs on your own, and it might be necessary to call in pest control professionals to handle them. The advantage to hiring someone who knows what they’re doing when it comes to bed bugs is that they’ll know where to look and what kind of tools to use. The pesticides you use might not be specifically designed to kill bed bugs, but pest control experts will have a better chance of getting good results with their specialized pesticides.
5. Toss out the Affected Items
One of the most effective ways to remove bed bugs from your home is to destroy anything they’ve infested. It’s so difficult to completely eliminate both the bugs and their eggs, particularly because they can be almost invisible to the naked eye. You might not even be able to see them without a magnifying glass. That’s how tiny they can be, which makes them super hard to get rid of when you combine that with their hardy design.
If you want to be sure that there are no more bed bugs on your mattress or couch, it may be simpler to simply get rid of these items. If you find that you’re fighting with bed bugs for months and months and still aren’t eliminating them, this may be the best option.
6. Cover Your Mattress
Another method you can use for keeping the bed bugs away and killing them is to place a mattress cover over your bed. Start by stripping off the linens and putting them in very hot water to wash and then cover the mattress with a cover that wraps all the way around and seals tight.
Then, you can put the linen back onto the bed, and any bed bugs inside the mattress cover will eventually die. They do take a long time to die, with some bed bugs not needing to eat for an entire year. However, you shouldn’t have bed bugs from your bed bothering you anymore.
Make sure you’re using a bed bug proof mattress cover, because this is not a product in your home you want to skimp on. A quality bed bug mattress cover will save you a lot of trouble and protect you from a lot of future bed bug bites.
Also consider covering the couch or any other furniture they might have infested. You can put these covers underneath upholstery and then have the furniture upholstered again, but you do want to make sure that you run the upholstery through very hot water to clean it properly and kill any bed bugs that may be there.
These are the most effective tips we can give you for eliminating bed bugs in your home, and we hope they help you finally and effectively deal with your problem.
