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Contrary to popular lore, you don’t get a bed bug infestation because your house is dirty, or because you live in a low-income area. It doesn’t matter if you clean your place every day, or if you live in the priciest neighborhood- if bed bugs find their way in, they’ll stay, breed and bite.
So how do they get in? For bed bugs to enter your home, they need to hitch a ride on someone or something, which means that as long as you’re careful about who and what you let into your house, you have a good chance of avoiding a bed bug problem. Let’s look at 5 reasons bed bugs have called your home their own.
Hotels and motels
Temporary lodging is an ideal breeding place for bed bugs, as there are lots of people with a high turnover, which is fertile ground for the introduction of these pests. All it takes is one childbearing female bed bug to get inside, and she can lay up to 5 eggs daily until the place is overrun with bed bugs. Once they’ve entered the property, they can spread rapidly through the rooms, through pipes and in vacuum cleaners… as well as to your house, by stowing away in clothing, items and luggage.
Unwittingly picking up these hitchhikers while traveling is one of the most common ways of getting bed bugs at hotels.
Your guests
Bed bugs can’t fly or jump very far. They literally have to crawl to get anywhere. But thanks to their tiny size and the fact that they can survive months without a blood meal, bed bugs have no problem traveling from place to place- they simply hide themselves in clothes, bags, and purses and off they go, from one infested home to another. Be careful about who you let sleep over at your place and whose place you stay over at, especially if you live in an area with an infestation. Inviting the wrong person to spend the night is a far too common way to acquire bed bugs.
Your neighbors have ‘em
You could be doing everything right to prevent bed bugs, but one day your neighbor picks up an infested freebie armchair from the town’s cleanup week, and you’ve suddenly got a bed bug problem. Bed bug migration, especially in shared housing situations like condos, apartments and dormitories, is pretty common since they can crawl over 100 feet in a night and go through tiny cracks in the walls, through connected vents, or even in the seams of floor boards. Be especially watchful if any of your neighbors report bed bugs- they may try to get rid of the infested furniture by dragging it through the common areas without having properly sealed it off. Bed bugs and their eggs can drop off this infested furniture and potentially enter your place.
“Free” can have a cost
Bringing discarded furniture into a house is a very common cause of bed bugs. People don’t always clearly mark bed bug-ridden furniture, and if you live in a city with a bed bug infestation, you really don’t want to take that risk, no matter how tempting that ultrasuede lounge chair looks. But although used furniture poses a higher risk, even new furniture like mattresses and sofas can be exposed to bed bugs during storage or in delivery vehicles.
Used clothes must be washed
Used clothes from a thrift store, from donations or borrowing from a friend can be a cause of bed bugs. You can still shop for great stuff at thrift stores, but don’t bring any used clothing into your home without washing it first in very hot water, as bed bugs can’t survive temperatures above 122 degrees. This doesn’t just apply to clothes. Used stuffed animals, bedsheets, etc. should all be washed in very hot water before being brought into your home.
