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Although a licensed pest control operator will probably perform these tasks more effectively, safely and legally, they can be expensive, especially for a whole house.
If you want to do it yourself, these steps to getting rid of bed bugs will help you:
Start off by finding the bed bugs. Sometimes easier said than done; their flat shape enables them to fit into barely noticeable crevices the width of a credit card.
Instead of ineffectual generalised spraying, arm yourself with a bright flashlight and target their nests. Search for adults, juniors and eggs, noting that sometimes individual eggs are scattered all over the home.
Dismantle bed frames and stand the components on their edges. Look for the bugs themselves and the light-brown molted skins of the nymphs. Remove the gauze fabric under the box spring in order to inspect and treat because there is a good chance they are inside your mattress. Check under the fabric stapled to the frame in the box springs.
Holes or tears in the gauze or fabric of the mattress probably means bed bugs and eggs will be inside. Because restrictions apply to treating mattresses with insecticides, pest control firms recommend infested beds be thrown out. But even if you do that, you need to get rid of the bed bugs already in your home, otherwise the new mattress will become infested too.
Cracks and crevices of bed frames, attached side railings and supports, head and foot boards all need to be closely examined, especially if the frame is wood. Bedbugs prefer fabric, wood and paper more so than metal or plastic.
If you cannot afford to replace the bed, vacuum it thoroughly. Brushing also helps. Try treating your bed with a portable steam machine. It helps but will not kill the bugs and eggs hidden inside the box spring or mattress.
Apply insecticide on the mattress, box springs and bed components without spraying the mattress surface, bed sheets, blankets or clothing.
After spraying and dusting, encase your mattress in one and the box spring in another sealable cover. If you just cover your mattress and box spring with plastic, the bed bugs will chew right through it. Cloth is probably more comfortable and more secure. Allergy supply companies sell zippered encasements for dust mite prevention.
Keeping the mattress covers sealed for a year or 18 months ensures you destroy the bug's life cycle. Inspect the bag regularly for damage; if you find any holes or tears, seal them with permanent tape and any trapped bugs will eventually die.
Only apply insecticide to a mattress if the product label specifically mentions it, and very few do. Should you find one, apply it as a light mist to the entire mattress, opening seams, tufts, and folds so the chemical penetrates these hiding places. Allow it to dry completely before using. Never sleep directly on a treated mattress without bed linen and do not treat mattresses of infants or ill people.
To stop bed bugs from crawling onto a bed, pull the bed frame away from the wall, tuck sheets and blankets in so they are off the floor and stand the legs of the bed in little dishes of mineral oil, or water with a drop of dish washing liquid.
Remove and inspect headboards secured to walls since this is one of the first places the bugs head for. They also hide among stuff stored under the bed.
Empty night stands and dressers, remove drawers, examine them inside and out, then turn them over to inspect underneath, looking for cracks, corners, and recesses.
Check upholstered chairs and sofas, carefully inspecting seams, tufts, skirts, and crevices beneath cushions, especially when used for sleeping.
Bed bugs like crawling upwards to hide in pictures, wall hangings, drapery pleats, loosened wallpaper, cracks in the plaster and ceiling-wall junctures.
Other common places to find bed bugs:
- Electrical boxes
- Floor cracks
- Cracks in wood molding
- Wall paper seams
- Beneath loose wallpaper near the bed
- Inside radios, phones, clocks, television sets and smoke detectors. When open, tap the smaller appliances into a bag or on sticky tape so the bugs do not jump and hide
- Under the tack board of wall-to-wall carpeting, especially behind beds and furniture.
- Amongst clothing stored in closets
- In laundry
- Within wicker furniture
- Secondhand beds, bedding and furniture; newer mattresses offer less hiding places.
Since infested bedding, curtains, pyjamas, garments and soft toys cannot be treated with insecticide, they need to be bagged and laundered in hot water, 120 degrees Fahrenheit minimum and dried using the hot setting, or discarded. When fully dry and very hot, dry them for another 20 minutes in the dryer and not naturally on the clothes line.
Dry cleaning works too but either tell the dry cleaner they are infested, or before you take the items to him, place them dry into a clothes dryer at moderate setting which will be below 160 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes.
The same with toys, shoes, backpacks and items not washable; heat them in a clothes dryer for 20 minutes. Or wrap them in black plastic bags and expose them to direct sunlight for at least a few days.
After washing, drying and dry cleaning, bag the items in sealed, airtight bags until you next use them.
Bedbugs also die when exposed to below freezing temperatures for at least two weeks. So if you have the space you can put some items in the freezer. Raising or lowering the thermostat is not good enough.
Overall cleanliness is key, so start by thoroughly cleaning the infested rooms as well as adjoining ones. Vacuum accumulated dirt and debris. Dislodge eggs by scrubbing infested surfaces with a stiff brush and reduce clutter to limit places they can hide.
With a powerful suction to remove bed bugs from cracks and crevices, vacuum along baseboards, around bed stands, headboards, footboards, mattress seams, tufts, buttons, edges of the bedding, edges of carpets, especially along the tack strips to remove bugs and eggs. When finished dispose of the vacuum cleaner bag by sealing it in a trash bag.
Steam clean the carpets to kill bugs and eggs which vacuuming may have missed. Steam cleaning does not work for mattresses though; it can lead to mold, mildew and dust mites.
Treat your home with a product whose label specifies bed bug control and it must have a long lasting residual effects, otherwise they will return.
Carefully read the label and apply only if you fully understand the instructions. Do NOT apply any insecticide or pesticide to mattresses or surfaces which are in direct contact with a person unless the label specifically says so. Some products contain chemicals not safe for people and pets.
Bug treatment products are usually one of three types:
1. Insecticidal dusts
Contain finely ground glass or silica powder and cause the bugs to dry out. Apply only to cracks, crevices, wall voids, attics and hollows, for example a tubular bed frame; these are places where bed bugs hide. Do not spread dust over carpets or under carpets where people or animals tread.
2. Contact insecticides
Contain one or more pyrethoids which knock down and kill bugs shortly after contact. Should be applied as spot treatments to cracks and crevices where bed bugs hide.
3. Insect growth regulators
These affect the reproduction cycle of insects and reduce populations. They do not kill quickly so often supplement other insecticides as part of the overall bed bug treatment plan.
Products available to consumers with the ingredients pyrethrin, resmethrin (0.3% spray) and allethrin are effective. Others even more potent may only be used by professionals.
Protect all food and eating utensils from insecticides. After ten days, apply a second treatment to kill the hatching nymphs. And after another ten days, a third treatment.
Changes you need to make around your home
Caulk and seal all holes. Fill all cracks and crevices in the walls, around baseboards and moldings. Repair cracks in plaster and glue down loosened wallpaper.
For your protection, remove nests or roosts of birds and bats in and on the home, and seal all screen openings.
As a home remedy you can try sprinkle boric acid powder in their nests but not directly on your mattress.
Inorganic materials, such as diatomaceous earth, also known as silica dioxide or silicone dioxide, and silica aerogel may kill them but are unlikely to sort out your whole problem. Try spreading this non-toxic powder you buy from feed and supply stores, around the perimeter of your room and when the bed bugs cross the powder, they coat themselves in it, become dehydrated and die. Also insert in crevices and cracks.
Baits and adhesive-based traps do not work for bedbugs. Neither do foggers, bug bombs or total release aerosol insecticides; they actually scatter the bedbugs and make extermination more difficult.
Natural remedies like undiluted tea tree oil may give limited relief but are unlikely to eliminate a bed bug infestation.
Some home remedies include applying bleach which kills on contact and spraying hot steam from a high powered steam cleaner into cracks for three seconds at a time.
But bed bugs are persistent, resilient insects. They can withstand the heat up to 100 degree temperatures, a short spell in your freezer, multiple pest control treatments and can live for a year without eating. If you want to completely get rid of them, you need to aggressively persist until you no longer get bitten and there are no longer any signs of habitation.
Visiting my favorite computer support website, I didn't expect to find information about a common household product like Bounce brand dryer sheets. However, as with many successful internet communities, the function sometimes exceeds its original ambitions. There was a post from September 12th that caught my eye, "Bounce this around" filed in "The Doctor's Lounge," (usually reserved for birthday announcements or other off-topic remarks). I was surprised to find the post was written like ad copy for Bounce brand dryer sheets:
The US Postal service sent out a message to all letter carriers to put a sheet of Bounce in their uniform pockets to keep yellow jackets [sic] away.
Use them all the time when playing baseball and soccer. It really works. The yellow jackets just veer around you.
1. All this time you've just been putting Bounce in the dryer! It will chase ants away when you lay a sheet near them. It also repels mice.
2. Spread sheets around foundation areas, or in trailers, or cars that are sitting and it keeps mice from entering your vehicle.
3. It takes the odor out of books and photo albums that don't get opened too often.
4. It repels mosquitoes. Tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito season.
The post went on to claim a total of 21 'alternative' uses for the product. I was astounded. Money couldn't buy advertising like this! My first thought was "What's in these dryer sheets anyway?" Surely if they repelled insects they must be toxic. So I turned to the chief resource abut the dangers of any household consumable, the Material Safety Data Sheet. Hoping to find something carcinogenic (or at least environmentally unfriendly); I was disappointed when the most serious health warning read: "ingestion of used or unused sheet by a young child or household pet may lead to impaction of the gastrointestinal tract. A physician or veterinarian should be contacted." So they could potentially cause constipation but obviously the manufacturers weren't worried about what might happen if you actually digested it.
"Biodegradable fabric softening agents", whatever those are, are the active chemicals on the sheets. According to the MSDS sheet, if you feed enough of it to rats (more than 1% of their body weight) it will kill them. That sounded like damning evidence to me, until I realized that if I ate 1% of my body weight of just about anything I'd probably be pretty sick myself.
By now I was thinking the 21 claims were a bit more dubious. Surely there must be official claims at BounceEverywhere.com, the website for this product. While Procter and Gamble, the owner of the Bounce brand, makes no claim of extraordinary insect fighting ability, some of the posters on the Bounce message boards have. "When in an outdoor area where wasps are a problem, just rub a fresh bounce sheet on your hair, clothing and exposed skin. It seems to repel[sic] the pests and keeps you smelling fresh to boot," claims Margie M. from Salyersville, KY. Well it's obvious that Bounce is not trying to deny that it may repel insects, even if they are not directly promoting it for that cause. As I dug further into the posts I found a trend. They allegedly repel mosquitoes, wasps, yellowjackets, moths, ticks, chiggers, ants, rats, mice, chipmunks, and even birds! Dissolve a sheet in water and use it to remove tough burned-on grease in pans, or even wallpaper from the walls! Yes, that's right, someone posting on BounceEverywhere.com claims to have used bounce to remove wallpaper. Bounce's official stance on the postings is "We do not edit your comments and therefore are not responsible for the content, or its accuracy." Having read enough of these outlandish claims, my research took a cynical turn. Surely there must be an unbiased resource for analyzing these claims. So I checked my favorite authority for confirming and debunking modern myths, snopes.com.
Snopes' article, titled "Bounce Back", addressed sixteen claims made about Bounce in a highly circulated email first documented in 2003. The article gave two of the sixteen claims a clear win for Bounce (both relating to its odor-fighting properties) and four claims a definitely not, while the balance fell into a category where it was not particularly effective, ineffective, or measurable.
At this point I was lost. How could I possibly refute every claim I'd found so far? I turned my research back to the original post that started my dilemma. I saw my comments had prompted a few more responses. "It's also an elephant repellant. See any elephants?" posted SpywareDr. My research had only managed to ask more questions than it answered, when another poster claimed:
*Cram one down the filler neck in your car's fuel tank and increase gas mileage by 430%.
*Tape ten sheets across both of your car's bumpers to prevent accidents--it repels other vehicles.
*Put a sheet in your dishwasher and your plates will be wrinkle-free.
*A sheet or two in the bottom of your computer case will prevent BSODs [windows errors] and corrupted files.
I haven't seen a difference in gas mileage yet, but I haven't had an accident since 1985, none of my dishes have wrinkles and my computer works perfectly.
The internet is the most ubiquitous tool of the information age, yet it seems to flourish on misinformation and disinformation. Realizing that after all this internet research I had yet to hold one of these mystical sheets in my hand, I went to the grocery store to purchase a box for my own experiments. Staring down the aisles I worked my way to the place on the shelf where the original scent Bounce dryer sheets should have been. "Outdoor Fresh Scent," "Fresh Linen," and "Spring Awakening," the boxes proclaimed. I resigned myself to smelling like a "Summer Orchard" and put one inside my jacket pocket. Two days later, I visited a friend with a small pet lovebird. As the bird hopped across the couch and into my lap I remembered the dryer sheet was still in my jacket, mere inches away from this adorable bird.
While my research revealed that Bounce may not be bird-repellent, I haven't seen any mosquitoes, wasps, yellow jackets, moths, ticks, chiggers, ants, rats, mice, or chipmunks. Or elephants, for that matter. But the box containing the rest of my Bounce dryer sheets will be staying right where it belongs: in my laundry room, on the shelf above my dryer.
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Modern washing machines have been around since the beginning of the 20th century. Prior to this laundry was boiled in large kettles of soapy water, or was placed in a bag and dragged along behind a boat. It is safe to say that doing a load of laundry was time consuming and was very hard on clothes. In the mid-19th century, inventors began working on ways to streamline clothes washing and building mechanized ways of doing laundry.
The first electric washing machine, with a tub rotated by a motor, came onto the market in 1900. The first oscillating washers hit stores in 1911. Clothes had to be wrung dry by cranking clothes through a wringer, so manual labor was still involved. By the 1950s, the washing machine as we know it, with timed cycles, spin dry and varied wash temperatures, came into being. These developments made laundry much safer and easier, helping the washing machine industry to explode and become a fixture in every American home. Before the advent of the modern washing machine, laundry took up a large part of the American homemaker's day. The modern washing machine let her put the laundry in the machine with some soap, turn a few knobs and go on with her day while the machine did the rest for her.
The first clothes dryers were perforated metal drums that rotated over a fire, much like a spit. This too was time consuming and took constant attention to avoid burning and scorching the clothes. It was quicker than hanging clothes out to dry and allowed clothes to be dried quickly during the winter months. Stove heated versions came about in the late 19th century, which made the process safer and soot-free. In 1915, an electric version entered the market. The first modern automatic clothes dryer followed in 1938. Manufacturers introduced dryness sensors in 1959, which turned dryers off when the clothes were dry. By this time, dryers had become much less expensive, making them a must-have item in every home along with a washing machine.
While it does not seem like appliances like the modern washer and dryer could affect history, they did. Since housework took much less time, homemakers found themselves with time to spare. They were able to enter the workforce without affecting their ability to keep house. Women entered the workforce in large numbers during the 1950s and 60s. When combined with the awareness of the inherent equality of all humankind promoted by civil rights movement, the stage was set for the women's rights movement. If women had not been able to have it all, the spotless home, well educated children, career and identity outside the home...the movement would have most likely stalled.
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