This is a fear that people really should take very seriously. In my last article I told you about how my friend was a bit shell-shocked when a bedbug outbreak happened in his own home after he accidentally brought them back from vacation.
While this is probably a bit rare and has a lot to do with how you handled your bag and how it is that they ended up in there in the first place, it is something that you definitely need to be very aware of. Once they take up shop inside your house, it is probably already way too late for you to eliminate the problem yourself, despite the multitude of products that they sell that claim to kill them.
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The first thing that you can do to eliminate them in your house is to never let them get there in the first place. This might be extreme, but seeing as how my friend kind of freaks out anytime he thinks he feels something crawling on him leads me to believe that he is permanently scarred by this experience and I think we would all prefer to not end up like that.
Don't let them in to begin with
This is the surefire way of elimination but you need to take precautions. If you have a garage, use it but even then, you are not safe. What you need to do is upon revisiting your house you need to leave your luggage outside, preferable with some bags waiting for you to seal them in. Then you need to remove all clothes from your bag (dirty or not) and put them in a bag and seal them extremely well. You want to still leave the luggage outside at this point.
Then, and you should plan for this before you ever left on the vacation, you have a separate set of clothes already waiting for you near the door. Take off all the clothes that you can outside of your house and leave the clothes you were wearing there in that sealed bag I'm not telling you to get naked in public but leave as much as you can outside the house. Then head straight to the bathroom and disrobe and place the clothes you were wearing moments ago into a bag and seal it. A ziplock bag or something that properly seals would be best. you will later add this to the other sealed clothes on the porch
Then shower and if you are truly paranoid use one of those anti-insect shampoos that are available online anywhere. Put on all new and clean clothes that you DID NOT take with you on your vacation.
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If you sealed the bag extremely well that contains your clothes you can wait on that for a bit but then we need to get to all non clothes items in your bag and the suitcase itself.
You want to spray the absolute hell out of this with insect killer. Do this outdoors and don't be shy with it. I mean really go to town with it. Unscrew any caps and even give a light dusting to any electronics. Trust me... they can live in there as well. They can live anywhere.
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photo of bedbugs living inside of a laptop
Once you have treated your luggage as if it was getting sterilized after coming back from space travel, I would still keep it inside of a bag for a while and store it somewhere in your house inside the bag until you need it later. I would also give a light bug spray to the bag itself after it is sealed.
If this sounds overboard, you would understand if you ever lived through an infestation. it is much much worse
As I mentioned before, you could probably wait with your clothes if the bag is properly sealed but if you do decide to wait, make sure that bag is clean on the outside. Then you need to do a HOT wash and perhaps get a special laundry additive that has a bug killing element to it as well.
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Regular detergent with hot enough water would likely do the trick but once again, if you could see how badly some people are traumatized by an infestation, you would understand why it is crucial to be very thorough.
Once the hot water wash is done dry everything on high heat. If you have delicate clothes that cannot do a hot wash or dry, put them in a different bag and later place them in a high sunlight area for many days.
The real bug killer here is heat. It is really the only thing that works on them 100% of the time. The ambient temperature must be 113 degrees F or 45 degrees C for *90 minutes or more to ensure the kill.
For me I will put all non clothing items in black bags in the sun and get them superheated as well. this includes laptops/phones/tablets/smartwatches. Provided that the devices are not on, they can easily endure this sort of heat. The bugs that are potentially living inside of them though, they cannot. Obviously it would be a terrible idea to use bug spray on electronics so don't do that.
In summary here are the steps you take to avoid infestation of your house when returning home from travels
- Leave everything you are not wearing outside your home when you return
- Empty your suitcase and put all clothes in a bag that you can seal. Leave all other items outside your house
- Spray all non electronic items with bug spray thoroughly including and especially suitcases. Seal toiletries in an airtight bag
- put all electronics in sealed bags as well
- Shower and change clothes immediately upon returning home. Make certain the clothes you were wearing do not come in contact with the clothes you are going to wear afterwards
- Wash and dry all clothes on high heat
- do not remove any items from any bags until they have been exposed to temperatures (inside the bag) of 113 degrees F or 45 degrees C for 90 minutes... for the truly paranoid, spray the exterior of the bags once they are sealed
- do not ever allow treated items to be in contact with untreated items (these clever bugs will move when bug spray is detected - seriously, it is alarming how good these things are at self-preservation)
I know this seems excessive and in all likelihood not taking these steps would probably not result in an infestation either. The thing is, it only takes two bedbugs to quickly make thousands of them and you can't really see them until after they have fed because they are extremely small and have clear shells. Basically they look like bits of sand or even smaller.
The horror is when perhaps a few weeks later you notice one in your house because much like roaches, if you see one, there are hundreds or thousands that you haven't seen. Eliminating bedbugs from your house professionally is a time-intensive and very expensive endeavor, not to mention the psychological toll it could potentially take on you as well. While it is a little bit funny, there is no denying that my buddy seriously has PTSD from his experience with an infestation and you don't want that.
If you follow the above steps when returning from a trip, you have made it virtually impossible for an infestation to occur in your house. Keep in mind that over 50% of people have no visible reaction to bites from bedbugs, so just because you don't have "mosquito bumps" on you doesn't mean you haven't been bitten!