How We Beat Bedbugs

This note came from a summertime customer of ours that seems to have beaten bedbugs.   Thank you for the feedback!  We love to hear bedbug success stores –keep them coming!

We first discovered we had bedbugs about a week after returned from a vacation.  We assume that they hitched a ride with us back from the hotel room. Predictably they had taken up residence in our bedroom. I guess that is why they are called bedbugs.  Ugh!

In our bedroom,we had a solid wood King size bed,a mattress,matching bedside tables piled with various electronic devices such as alarm clocks,phone chargers,a cd player,and other bedside accoutrement.  Several feet away there is a wooden set of drawers,a bookcase lined with books an keepsakes,and two closets.

In our bedroom,a bedbug could find an infinite number of hiding spaces within a short distance of their favourite food source – us!

This is how I believe we concurred the bedbug problem.

We dismantled the bed,dresser,and bedside tables and took all the wood parts of our bed onto the driveway for a good soapy wash,dry,bake in the sun,and a light diatomaceous dusting.

Put everything washable into black plastic garbage bags and and started on a seemingly endless number of loads of laundry to get everything washed and dried on the hottest settings possible (sorry mother earth!).  We sorted the clothes by how soon we would need them and kept a minimal amount of clothes in “active rotation“during the ordeal.   Over the past few weeks we have been activating our winter clothes.

Put my pillows directly to the dryer for several hours each.

Bagged up the mattress with mattress bags (yes – with DE inside),covered it with a second layer of plastic garbage bags,and set it outside to bake in the sun for several days.

Bagged up all electronics individually in black plastic garbage bags and placed them outside to bake as well.

Bagged up the books I wanted to keep in black garbage bags to bake in the sun (many got thrown away)

Took all the wood parts of our bed onto the driveway for a good soapy wash,dry,bake in the sun,and a light DE dusting.

Took my foam mattress pad onto the driveway to bake plus an alcohol spray to kill eggs as you suggested.  We used the extra mattress bag to bag it up then covered it with black garbage bags to attract the heat of the sun.

Anything that didn`t get hot enough to kill bedbugs (150°F for several hours) we sprayed with alcohol and dusted with DE.   We also used the DE pretty liberally on the walls,baseboards etc after giving them all a hot soapy wash.

Hint for your customers:you must tag the bags as you seal them. Our garage was a sea of black plastic trash bags for several weeks.  We kept as much inside as we could and would put them out on the driveway whenever there was a sunny day until we needed the item.  There is no way you can remember what’s inside a particular bag without a label.

While the room was empty,we gave it a thorough cleaning.  We washed the baseboards and walls leaving the place immaculate.  We vacuumed the carpet EVERY DAY for two weeks concentrating on the baseboards.  Once the walls were dry we used a big paintbrush dipped in your diatomaceous earth to do the wall dusting.

Luckily all this happened during the heat of summer –if the weather had been cool and wet,this whole process would not have worked. As it was,we had reasonable confidence that any bedbugs were either dead or isolated in a black garbage bag.

Now,how would you go about demonstrating that there were no bed bugs left in that room? Obviously,we`ve set out traps such as the yogurt container with DE and double sided tape,and so far our (mostly) poison free treatment seems to have been a success!  (We cheated a bit and sprayed some raid into the garbage bags with the electronics while they were baking in the sun)

Thanks for all the info!