The holiday season is right around the corner and many people will be traveling to different cities, states, and possibly other countries visiting friends and family members. This also means that many of us will be staying in a hotel or motel if you don’t feel like squeezing into a small house with other family members, which is another discussion in itself. If you plan on staying in a hotel or motel, keep these important tips in mind! The dreaded bed bug can easily be picked up in a cheap motel or a nice hotel room, they play no favorites and the scary thing is you may not even know it until these nasty little bugs have made themselves at home in your own bed. Not a comforting thought!
When you’re getting ready and packing up everything you’ll need for your trip, we recommend packing a small flashlight because this will help aid you so you can do some of your own investigative work on your motel or hotel bed and other areas throughout the room. It’s always a good rule of thumb to start checking out the room as soon as you get there, don’t wait because the bed bugs will start hitching a ride on your stuff without you even knowing it or worse you’ll forget and it’ll be too late. The best thing to do when you enter your room is to start out by not setting your luggage on the bed, which is something we all do out of habit. Instead we recommend setting your luggage on a hard surface, for example the bathroom counter, a nearby table or the TV stand or you could even set your stuff in the bathtub as a last resort while you do your inspection of the room.
• The first thing you want to do is to pull back all of the sheets and do a thorough inspection of the mattress seams, paying close attention to the corners. While you’re doing all of this and you’ve got your handy flashlight in hand, we also recommend moving or lifting the mattress to check underneath as these nasty little critters will sometimes hide under the mattress, which you won’t know they’re there unless you actually look. What you’re looking for are the telltale signs of what looks like rust colored spots but are actually clusters of bedbugs.
• Next you’ll want to thoroughly inspect all angles of the head board, pulling it away from the wall if necessary. Then you’ll want to thoroughly inspect the inside of all of the drawers, dressers and nightstands. We’d also recommend inspecting everything from top to bottom, leaving no stone unturned so to speak.
• Next you’ll want to thoroughly inspect anything that is upholstered, for example the chairs, a couch, curtains and especially your bed sheets.
• Next you’ll want to thoroughly inspect all of the edges of the carpet and corners for bed bugs, you do this because they can literally be anywhere in the room, pay special close attention and thoroughly inspect the carpet edges that are closest to the bed being that those edges are most likely where you’ll find them if they’re there.
Now let’s say you’ve completed your inspection and wouldn’t you know it, you’ve found the dreaded bed bug. Immediately grab all of your stuff and leave the room. You should certainly notify management of what you’ve found and ask to change rooms or find another place to stay because chances are if they’re in one room they’re going to be in multiple rooms or throughout the entire motel or hotel. Would you want to take a chance that the entire place could be infested with bed bugs? Not likely. If you do decide to stay though and just change rooms and not go to another motel or hotel for whatever reason be sure that you do not move to a room adjacent and or directly above or below the suspected infested room. Bed bugs are notoriously famous for hitching rides on the housekeeping carts, other guest’s luggage, or believe it or not even through wall sockets.
Keep in mind that bed bugs are not picky insects and will hitchhike a ride with anyone at any time, it doesn’t matter who you are, there are no exceptions. Now let’s say you did all of your room inspections like you were supposed to and you made it home. Before bringing your luggage inside or anything that was with you in the motel we recommend inspecting everything before bringing it into your hopefully, bed bug free home. If you want to go a step further you can use a vacuum or a garment steam cleaner on your suitcases before putting them away in storage or a closet. What a steam cleaner will do is it will kill any bed bugs or their eggs that may have stowed away somewhere in your suitcase or handbag. Also it’s a good idea to not just put your clothes into a hamper; take them from the luggage and put them directly into the washer. We’d even recommend doing this with the clothes that may not have been worn, which almost everyone has leftover clothes that weren’t worn because we always overpack just in case. You’ll then want to wash all of your clothing in hot water. If you procrastinate this process and the longer you wait, this will give bedbugs more time to get established in your home and then you have a real nasty problem on your hands.
However we realize even if you take these types of measures, bed bugs may still find their way into your stuff and into your home. This is where a professional pest control service like Boise Pest Control will be your saving grace. Nobody wants to share their bed and home with these insects, just the thought of it makes people cringe and it should. They can be a real problem and wreak havoc in all kinds of ways.
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