How to Prevent Bed Bugs in Your Home

Bed bugs travel from hotel beds to your own home.

Bed bug infestation has become more common with the rise of international travelers and a ban on DDT pesticides. While your home may be bed bug free, you must take precautions when you travel and stay in hotel rooms. Bed bugs easily attach to luggage, clothing and shoes, and can travel from hotel to hotel, eventually coming home with you to your own bed. You can take preventive measures while you travel to ensure bed bugs do not infest your house.

Instructions

1. Refer to The Bed Bug Registry website (see Resources) while planning your hotel stay. This site displays hotels where travelers have found bed bugs and will allow you to avoid these places.

2. Place your luggage somewhere elevated off the floor of the hotel room. This prevents bed bugs from entering your luggage and belongings.

3. Lift the mattress and inspect the bed frame and headboard of a hotel bed for signs of bed bugs. Look for black spots on the mattress or clear shavings from the bug shells. You may even find the bed bugs, which will be small, flat and brown in color.

4. Examine the dresser drawers and seams of chairs for signs of bed bugs.

5. Check your luggage and clothing carefully before you leave for bed bugs that might have attached to your belongings.

6. Wash and dry your clothes in the hottest settings possible once you are home to kill any bed bugs that escaped your notice.

7. Vacuum inside and outside of your travel bags and luggage and discard the contents of your vacuum into a sealed bag.

Tips & Warnings

• If you find bed bugs in a hotel, report it to management and consider entering it on The Bed Bug Registry website.

References

• University of Minnesota: Traveler Q & A: Preventing Bed Bugs from Hitchhiking to Your Home
• Good Housekeeping: How to Check for Bedbugs

Resources

• The Bed Bug Registry