If you've been waging a never-ending battle with bed bugs, you might be making some common mistakes during the treatment process. Bed bugs can be extremely difficult to get rid of, especially once they've really dug into a home. Unfortunately, once the initial treatment has failed, it's easier for the bed bugs to create a massive infestation. If you feel as if you've lost your battle against the bed bugs, don't give up. Simply identify the mistakes you might have made during your previous attempts at eradication, and avoid doing them again. Here are four possible mistakes you might have made that allowed for a re-infestation of bed bugs.
You Didn't Wash All the Bedding
One common mistake that people often make when they're battling bed bugs is that they fail to wash all their bedding. They may wash the bedding on the affected bed, but they fail to wash the bedding that's folded neatly in the linen closets, or on other beds. After a bed bug infestation, it's crucial that you wash all the bedding in your house, in hot water. You never know when bed bug eggs might be hiding in the creases of your nicely-folded sheets, just waiting for the opportunity to climb back into one of your cozy beds.
You Didn't Find their Hiding Places
Another common mistake is not looking for your bed bugs favorite hiding places. You might not realize this, but bed bugs will hide in places like your laundry hampers, toy boxes, and even the upholstered chairs you might have in the bedrooms. If you didn't treat those areas, you might have missed some key hiding places. Now that you're treating your home again, don't forget to tackle those hiding places.
You Didn't Treat a Wide Enough Area
It's not uncommon to treat the main area of the infestation, such as the bedroom. However, it's also not uncommon for that practice to leave bed bugs behind. The reason is that most people don't realize that bed bugs do travel. In fact, they've been known to travel throughout the house – by crawling, hopping, or being carried around on blankets, clothing, and stuffed animals. If your last bed bug treatment focused on one area, and avoided the other bed rooms – or the rest of the house – chances are good that you missed the bulk of the infestation.
You Didn't Ensure Follow-Up Treatment
It's common to assume that one treatment will eradicate the bed bug infestation. The problem with that assumption is that it actually takes several treatments to ensure that the bed bugs are completely out of your home. If you stopped at one treatment after your last run-in with bed bugs, it's highly likely that this current infestation is a continuation of the last one.
Don't let bed bugs win. If you're still dealing with a bed bug infestation, and you made any of the mistakes listed above, contact a pest control company near you, like Arab Termite and Pest Control. They can help you eradicate the problem once and for all.
