How to check for bed bugs at home

How do you check for bed bugs at home? Bed bugs are one of the most resilient pests you can ever encounter in your home. So, you might wonder if bed bugs are in your home. This article aims to find out how to check for bed bugs at home.

You may say – “there is no place as sweet as a home.” While bed bugs would say – “there is no place as sweet as your home.” Bed bugs love your company and would always try their best to be around you all the time. This is why they find their way into our clothes, furniture, luggage, and finally into our homes.

Once there, getting them out is usually challenging. This is because they find the hard-to-reach areas in our homes and reside there, reproducing and slowly taking over. Therefore, it is imperative to check for bed bugs at home from time to time.

Ways to check for bed bugs at home

To check for bed bugs at home, you have to look around the areas in which you and your family spend most of the time.

These places could be under and at edges of the mattresses in the rooms, inside the cushions of the sofas or the folds of the couches in the parlor, the handles, and edges of furniture in the dining and wardrobes, are some critical places at home you carry out bed bugs check. Others include inside books, around bookshelves, radios, telephone, edge of carpets, electrical outlets, closet and lots more.

As said earlier, also realize they find their way into cracks and crevices in your home. To find these bed bugs be sure to use a flashlight and magnifying glass. It would help if you also had gloves for protecting your hands and a credit card for checking into cracks and crevices. When searching for bed bugs around your home, look for the following signs:

● Bloodstains on your pillowcase and sheets. These stains might even look like rust stains.
● Bed bugs excrement. These are usually dark brown or black smears or spots resembling ground black pepper.
● Bed bugs also give off an offensive musty odor. Some people say this smells like sour raspberries, but they become more apparent when the infestation is severe.
● Also, look for bed bug eggs and their shells. These are pearly white and resemble tiny rice grains.
You may also look for bed bug skins that look like the actual bugs but are yellowish and translucent.

Bed bug treatments for your home

If you find or suspect that there are bed bugs in your home, the next step is to eliminate the infestation as soon as possible. Here are steps you must take to achieve this:

● Use a stiff brush to remove bed bugs from your bed sheets and other clothing items. It would help if you did this across all things you suspect of having bed bug eggs before vacuuming
● Wash your clothes at the hottest possible temperature.
● Now dry all items you can’t wash at the highest possible temperature for about 30 minutes.
● Get a mattress encasement that is tightly woven and with a zippered cover so that bed bugs don’t get into your mattress or escape from it.
● Repair cracks and crevices alongside wallpaper using plaster or glue
● Also, get rid of clutter from around your bed.
● Consider spraying your home with an appropriate bed bug spray to kill all bed bugs altogether.

Concluding thoughts

Is it essential to check for bed bugs at home? Having bed bugs around your home is not a death sentence, but bed bug bites can cause terrible irritation to the skin. So, diligently checking for bed bugs around your home is a great way to prevent or stop an infestation in its tracks.

How to check for bed bugs in a new house

How Do You Check For Bed Bugs?

How do You Check Motel for Bed Bugs?

Do Deer Eat Carrots?

Will Deer Eat Evergreen Trees