You likely do not need to worry about clothes hanging up. This will keep the bugs on your clothes and sheets from creeping out and spreading to other parts of your home.
You can take your bags to a laundromat if you don’t have a washing machine at home. You do not need to worry about spreading the infestation at the laundromat so long as you keep your clothes bagged and empty them directly into the washing machine.
This applies to teddy bears, hats, hacky sacks, desk trinkets, and any other items that aren’t made entirely out of metal or plastic.
Use your big deep freezer to do this if you have one. If your freezer is packed, empty out your ice, thaw any food to eat it in the next 1-3 days, and toss the rest of it out. You may need to do this in waves if you have a lot of items to freeze and you’re tight on space.
If you want to rent the steamer, contact a cleaning supply store or construction supply store. It shouldn’t cost more than $20 a day to rent. This process will not eradicate the infestation, but it will make it much easier to treat the problem. This is technically a heat treatment, but the vacuuming and steaming have to go together. The vacuum will lift up all of the dead bugs you kill with the steamer.
If you see a lot of dead bugs all over the place when you’re done, vacuum them up and discard the bag immediately.
While both silica aerogel and diatomaceous earth are nontoxic, you’re still better off wearing rubber gloves and a dust mask when you apply them just to keep the chemicals off of you. Keep any pets or children out of the rooms you’re treating. [12] X Research source Foggers and bug bombs are not effective against bed bugs. It really seems like they would be, but bed bugs are pretty adept at hiding in microscopic cracks and nooks. Many of the bugs will survive if you go this route. If you get diatomaceous earth, use the food-grade version to kill the bugs. While the pesticide versions are nontoxic so long as you don’t rub it into your skin, the food-grade stuff is completely safe. [13] X Research source Regular pesticides that kill ants, wasps, and other common bugs won’t do anything to bed bugs.
There’s nothing wrong with using the bottle instead of a duster; it’s just a little harder to get an even spread when you squirt the pesticide out. The silica aerogel is only sticky to the bugs. It will look like a powder to you and won’t stick to your furniture. [15] X Research source
It can be tempting to just completely coat the room in this stuff. This won’t be any more effective than targeting the problematic areas though, and all you’ll do is make a bigger mess for yourself. Bed bugs drink blood to survive. As a result, you’ll only see them in rooms where people sleep. Unless you’ve seen bed bugs outside of your bedroom, you only need to treat your bedroom and closets.
If you have any carpets, give them a spritz as well. If the entire room is carpeted, spread a 1–2 feet (0. 30–0. 61 m) wide layer of pesticide around every baseboard, piece of furniture, and fixture in the room. You do not need to cover your clothes in pesticide. Washing, drying, and keeping the clothes out of the infested room will keep them bug-free.
Bed bugs are notoriously resilient. It may take 3-4 attempts to clear out the infestation entirely. Luckily, your odds of success increase with each attempt. You can take 10 days off to stay with a friend if you’d like, but you can stay in the same room as the pesticide. Just try to walk around the powder and keep children and pets out of the room. Keep your windows closed and fans off while you’re leaving the pesticide out. If your room gets a lot of air, it could blow the pesticide away.
If you’re waking up with bites but you don’t see any bugs in the interceptors, there’s a hole in your mattress encasement or your sheets are infested. Re-bag your mattress and wash and dry your sheets. If you don’t have a bed frame, get one. It’s incredibly hard to fight a bed bug infestation if your mattress and box spring are on the floor.
This is really the only way to know with 100% certainty that the bed bugs have been eradicated. Unfortunately, it can cost $500-2,000 to treat an infestation depending on the severity. Once the problem is thoroughly dealt with, you’ll be able to return to your bug-free home and rest easy knowing they’re gone.
