When you come back home from a trip, the last thing you want is to bring back an unwanted guest with you. These critters creep, crawl, sleep in your bed with you and give you bites.
We are talking about the notorious pest’s bed bugs, which are feared because of their penchant for crawling into beds of unsuspecting homeowners and leaving them with nasty bites. Bed bug bites can cause rashes, itchiness, and allergic reactions. The severity of which depends on how your body reacts to it.
But what do bed bugs look like?
Bedbugs are tiny, oval-shaped pests that don’t have wings. Adults are entirely brown and are about 4 to 5 mm in length. They have vestiges of wings, but they can’t fly.
So how do you watch out for bed bugs when you are traveling?
When you’re going on a trip, it can be relatively easy to spot and avoid bedbugs with these easy tips:
- Do a thorough examination of the hotel room as soon as you check in. Scan the bed, look under the mattresses, look under couches, armchairs, or any other furniture in the room — bedbugs love to hide in tiny crevices.
- Also, take a look at the headboards and cracks behind the bed, as bedbugs can hide there as well. Though bedbugs are generally associated with fabrics, they can hook their claws in wooden furniture as well.
- Check all the usual bedbug hiding places, like the crevices in the mattresses, sheets, under the furniture, and even hollow bedposts. Since bedbugs are nocturnal pests, they tend to disappear into dark cracks during the day. So make sure you check the nook and cranny of the hotel room.
- If you can spot minor dark-colored stains, it might be a sign of a bedbug infestation.
- Make sure you keep your luggage off the floor and on an elevated surface after you’ve checked it for bedbugs. The packed luggage should be placed away from the bed and the wall to reduce the risk of bed bugs crawling up to the wall and into your belongings.
- When you check out, always check your luggage to make sure you’ve not picked up any of these pesky hitchhikers when you go home.
How to prevent bed bugs when you return home
You might have missed spotting bed bugs when traveling, so it is crucial to make sure there are no pests in your luggage when you’re back.
Here are a few tips that will help you prevent bedbugs in your home after you’ve returned home after a trip:
- Don’t unpack your bags in a bedroom or the living room.
- Instead, put your luggage bags in your garage or kitchen.
- Put all the clothing you had packed, including clothes you were wearing when you got home, in a plastic bag.
- Wash all these clothes — even the unused ones. Then, use the highest temperature in the drier. This is the best way to get rid of bed bugs.
- Vacuum your empty suitcase inside out, and make sure you dispose of the vacuum bag or the contents of your vacuum in the trash outside. Take a cotton ball dipped in alcohol and rub it into the corners of your bags for extra caution.
- Shoes and other travel essentials that you can’t wash should be placed in a airtight bag. Then put the bag in the sun or the garage for at least one day to kill the bed bugs.
- If there’s no sun, carefully inspect the items in the bag for bedbugs before you bring them inside your home.
If you think your house has been infected by bedbugs when you’ve traveled outside, you should immediately consult a professional pest control operator who has experience dealing with bedbugs.
Author Bio
Raymond Web has taken the task to educate people on pest prevention and control strategies, helping them keep their surroundings healthy, safe, and pest-free. Being the digital marketing manager for taking Care of Termites and Pest Control, a top-rated pest control service in Tracy, CA, he has an in-depth understanding of people and their pain points due to pests, which he uses in his content to educate.
