Tag Archives: pest control

Preparing for Pest Professionals – When Doing It Yourself Isn’t Enough

Posted on November 18 by Jillian416 • 1 Comment

I’ve been through the whole Bed Bug business, so I’d like to consider myself a pro at handling this. So far, I’ve talked about how you can identify if you have bed bugs, Cleaning after finding bed bugs, how you can get rid of them on your own, and today I’m going to talk about how you get ready for Pest Control if, in the end, you decide that you need a professional.

I’m going to be honest with you right up front, it isn’t easy. In some ways, you may think that you would have rather just handled everything on your own, but I assure you that having the professionals in was the RIGHT decision, and if you can afford it, I would absolutely recommend the same for you.

How to Prep for Bed Bug Pest Control

Wash everything. Literally. You will need to go through and wash everything that can be washed in the rooms where you’ve seen the bed bugs. This means emptying out every drawer and your entire close. Even if you THINK that there aren’t any bed bugs lurking in your clothes, don’t take the risk, just wash everything.
Remove all bedding, including mattress pads and the gauze underneath the box springs. Bed bugs LOVE holing up behind the mesh. Wash all of the bedding and the mattress pad, toss the gauze out.
Remind yourself that everything must be washed in HOT HOT water and then dried in HOT heat for at least 30 minutes (I personally go longer).
Store clean laundry in an airtight container. Once you’ve completed a load of laundry, you will NOT want to put it back in your drawers / closet until after pest control finishes. You need to place it in an airtight bag, but those vacuum bags are expensive. We did a little research and determined that the large black contractor bags (these worked best for us, Husky Contractor bags), twisted closed and then sealed with a zip tie are JUST as effective and much less.
Remove all of the face plates on outlets and light switch covers. If you’re wondering why, it’s because Bed Bugs can lurk within walls and enter and exit via this face plates. They’re pretty simple to remove, so just do it!
Place all of the furniture in your rooms in the center of each room. Pest control will need to get behind and around them so that they can treat the edges of the room. I recommend getting slippy furniture movers, they make them both for hardwood and for carpeted floors. For hard wood and for carpet (affiliate links).
If you live in an apartment, insist that your landlord have all apartments checked for Bed Bugs. <A little secret, our landlord refuses to force the tenants below us to have their place inspected. She said she’d let them know we have had them, but will not force them to have a person come in and look. So frustrating!!!>
Finally, remind yourself that no matter the hassle of prepping for pest control, it is worth it, if you can once and for all, get rid of the Bed Bugs.

Going through the whole experience (now, twice) has been difficult, but I have learned a lot and am hopeful that I can impart some of this knowledge onto you.

If you’d like to read my other posts on the subject matter of Bed Bugs, you can read them here.

How to Choose a Pest Control Company – a fantastic article, that is very handy to have around, should you ever need to hire pest control.

Your turn!

If you’ve gone through an ordeal like this before, how did YOU prepare?

Have you had to do as much as we did? More? Less? Share in the comments below!

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Filed Under: Family

Bed Bugs: Do-It Yourself Pest Control

Posted on November 1 by Jillian416 • 21 Comments

Getting rid of bed bugs on your own can be time consuming, but with the right tools and right amount of effort you can be successful. Here’s what we did to assist in the removal of the bed bugs (this is before the professionals came in).

Suburban Pest Control couldn’t get us in right away, and we didn’t want to deal with the bugs all crawling around so we went ahead and took measures into our own hands, to get the pest control started.

Believe it or not there were a ton of articles on this topic. Never having experienced them before, I did not realize how prevalent they were. So, with just a little google search, we managed to find some great tips, and the tools we would need to get this clean-up going.

What we did before the professionals came in:

Quick assessment to determine where the bed bugs were mostly located. Before running out to the nearest store to buy your supplies, I recommend looking around the rooms of your home, identifying where the bed bugs may be located. Are you only seeing them in one room, or multiple. This will help you to know how much of each supply you’ll need and how much work you’ll be putting into prepping the room.

Purchase the commercial-use supplies to treat the bed bugs. There are many supplies that are off limits for you to use on your own, please keep that in mind. Leave the professional treatments, to the professionals.

Here’s what we purchased:

– Diatomaceous Earth (DE) – This is a dust that you will sprinkle in all cracks or crevices along the wall, baseboards, parts of your bed that you can’t take apart. What it does is dry out the bed bug when it comes into contact with it. This is great to sprinkle along the pieces of your bed frame that connect, but that you just can’t get to. Diatomaceous Earth is just crushed fossilized earth – it is non-toxic, but obviously, you still want to take precautions when using it.

– Hot Shot Bed bug and Flea Spray – This is an insecticide that treats on contact. The spray must hit the actual bug, or the bug must walk through it while wet, in order to kill them. It is effective, you just need to be diligent about treating with it. It’s obviously not safe to be ingested, so you want to be super careful making sure that you don’t have this around children.

– Interceptor Cups – These are a great way to keep new beg bugs from getting onto the bed. They are basically plastic cups, that go underneath each of the legs of your bed. They are ridged on the outside to make it easy for the bed bug to climb into, but smooth on the inside so that they cannot climb out. Very useful!

– Mattress and Box Spring Covers – You want these to approved to keep bed bugs in or out. They make plastic ones, that are inexpensive, but they’re noisy and would likely disturb sleep. We purchased the ones made out of polyester, you can’t even tell that it’s on. They slip on over the mattress (you need a seperate one for the box spring), zip up tight and then you close it with a zip tie (usually provided) and then velcro it close. You are not supposed to remove the cover for up to 18 months (is what’s recommended). This is because bed bugs can live up to a year without feeding (gross! I know!).

Take apart any furniture that you can. If you have a couch where the cushions come out, take the time to remove them and sprinkle the DE right onto all of the cracks and crevices. If you have a bed or crib that can be easily disassembled, I would recommend doing that and ensuring there aren’t any bugs hiding in the recessed screw holes. Yes, this will take a lot of time, but if you are determined to do this on your own without professionals, it is going to take a TON of work.

Wash everything that can be washed in hot water and then dried (for at least 30 minutes) in hot heat. Seriously, I mean EVERYTHING that can be washed, and then placed in a hot hot dryer. The recommendation for length of time in the dryer is 30 minutes, I always go longer, but this is up to you. Also, I should note, you c get away with just drying something – you don’t always need to wash it. So, for instance, if you have a shirt or sweater that wanould be totally worthless with a wash and dry, simply placing the sweater with just a few items in the dryer, on high heat, will do the trick.

Check all locations where they were found, frequently. You can never be too diligent – I recommend doing a sweep of the rooms you found them in daily. When you spot one, you can treat the area with DE in hopes that if there are others, the DE will do the trick. I also, personally recommend at least drying on high heat, every other night, all bedding, to ensure no new bugs hang out in the folds or seams.

There you have it, my do-it-yourself guide to getting rid of bed bugs. If you’ve missed my previous two posts you can read how we identified bed bugs and how we began the clean-up process upon immediately finding them, by clicking the highlighted links.

If you’d like some additional reads, check-out these two articles from Texas A&M Agrilife Extension: Bed Bugs & Insects in the City.

Your turn!

Have you experienced bed bugs? Did you handle it on your own, or did you immediately hire professionals?

Please note, a few of the links used in this article are affiliate links. It does not change the cost of the product for you, I just get a small portion of the proceeds of that purchase.

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Filed Under: Family, For the Home

Cleaning After Finding Bed Bugs

Posted on October 24 by Jillian416 • 2 Comments

Finding bed bugs in your home can be a nightmare situation, I’m sharing my tips on how we got the majority of them out of the house before we had pest control come in.

If you haven’t read my post about identifying bed bugs, I recommend you click and read it. You’ll understand more of how we found them, it will give you the full picture.

Finding bed bugs in your home can be a nightmare situation, especially if you are not armed with the appropriate means to handle the situation. While, I truly hope you never have to deal with them, I’m going to be sharing our exact process for how we cleaned up, immediately after finding them.

The first thing we did was collect all of the bedding that had been infested. We wanted to remove the bedding without having the bed bugs fall out and land elsewhere in the house. Since we did not have everything we needed from the very beginning, we did the best we could. I grabbed all of our white 13 gallon trash bags and brought them to the entrance of Emmett’s room. Then I slowly started peeling away his sheet and mattress pad, I curled them inside of themselves and immediately placed it into a white garbage bag, tied it tightly closed and took it to the basement.

When washing items that may have bed bugs or their eggs on it, you want to ensure that you are washing your clothes in hot HOT water and then drying (for at least 30 minutes) in the highest temperature your dryer can go to. This will kill off any of the living bugs and their eggs. I also recommend, that even if you don’t see any bugs on an item, you wash &/or dry it anyway, there could be eggs that you’re not seeing and you don’t want to mess around. We took all of the stuffed animals, blankets, everything on Emmett’s bed and our own, down and washed them.

Once I had the first load of wash running, I went back upstairs to see how Emmett was doing. I recommend having a full queue of TV shows/books/new toys for your little one to play with, or better yet, if you can send them to a friend or family member’s house, do that. We didn’t have that luxury, so Emmett got to watch an extreme amount of TV that day.

Back in Emmett’s room, we took the entire crib apart because we wanted to ensure that there were not any bed bugs hiding inside of the brackets of the crib. While Seamus was doing that, I went through his dresser, ensuring that there were not any bugs hanging out inside or underneath any of the drawers (there weren’t, thank goodness). We also took the time to check the drawers of his nightstand and changing table, and the only place we found them (in his room) was on his bed skirt and around the baseboards near his bed.

Anything that was left in his room was placed inside of a white plastic garbage bag and immediately taken into the basement. We wanted to avoid any risk of the bed bugs spreading elsewhere in our apartment.

In my next post, I will be sharing how we managed to keep the clean laundry from getting re-infested and how we started the pest control process on our own.

If you want to read more about how we identified the bed bugs in our home, feel free to click on through.

Your turn!

If you’ve had bed bugs, or other pests in your home – what were your first steps in fighting them, before you could get the professionals in? Comment below!

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Filed Under: Uncategorized