How To Prevent Bed Bugs: Effective Means

Another saying we’ve all heard, ‘prevention is better than cure’, is good advice when it comes to bed bugs. Indeed, knowing how to prevent bed bugs is extremely useful for your fight against these horrible critters, because things get a lot harder once an infestation has occurred.

Now, if you do this yourself, there aren’t really many short cuts. As was noted in the previous chapter, ‘What Are Bed Bugs?‘, bed bugs move quickly and are good at hiding. So, there may be some difficulty in preventing an infestation but there are certainly some good steps one can take to reduce the risk.

The best way to prevent an infestation is to know how to avoid bed bugs from entering your home in the first place. There are loads of ways a bed bug can get into your home and the irony is that the most common way bed bugs end up in someone’s house is that they are brought there by their new host!

In this regard there are some useful tips you can follow to avoid bringing home some new unwanted pets. Try to avoid purchasing used furniture, but if you must try to go for leather or anything else that isn’t soft fabric. Also try to avoid purchasing used bedding or mattresses if you can, but we all know that one can get a really good deal if one buys second hand as opposed to new, so it’s not the end of the world if you buy second hand, but just be sure to do a thorough inspection of your purchase before you get home. I would also recommend taking a look at some mattress encasements for your bedding. We’ve taken a look at many mattress encasements and reviewed the best ones. Click here to take a look.

The first precautionary measures are to check your luggage before you return home from a trip and if whilst away you suspect there are bed bugs in your room, get your luggage out and switch rooms immediately; even switch hotels if you can as if one room is infested there is a good chance that other rooms are as well. When lodging in a hotel room, don’t put luggage on the bed. Put it on a suitcase holder if provided or alternatively in the bath tub.

Once you have returned home put your laundry into plastic bags before going inside the house, so as to prevent bed bugs falling off your clothes and making a dash to set up their new camp in your house. All it takes is a few bed bugs and within weeks there’ll be hundreds and before long, thousands. So take those plastic bags straight to your laundry area so you can put your clothes straight from the bags into the washing machine.

Always inspect your luggage and bags themselves for bed bugs. Obviously your suitcases and the like can’t be put in the washing machine, so vacuum them off and hand wash any other items which can’t be put in the washing machine. Use hot soapy water when doing so.

If you follow the tips mentioned above you will drastically reduce the chances of bed bugs entering your home, which is by far the best way to ensure that these nasty creatures cause as little grief in your life as possible. In the next chapter we’ll be discussing the tell tale signs of a bed bug infestation.

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