If you’ve been on vacation, only to discover that you stayed in a hotel room or hostel infested with bed bugs, you need to get rid of the bed bugs before you get home and curl up in your own bed that you’ve missed so much. And if its your home that has become infested, you need to find a way to kill bed bugs in your clothing and personal items, and then keep them clean.
If you aren’t going to be going home for a while, find a laundromat. Otherwise, head home and place all of the affected items in your garage or driveway. If you don’t have either of those, use your porch (move welcome mats and anything else out of the way). Get some trash bags, and bag up everything. Toiletries, electronics, and other items that can’t be washed will have to wait. If you’re away from home and are going to have to get back in your car, carefully check over the interior of the car, carefully. Use a flashlight.
First of all, deal with your clothes. If you’re at a laundromat, keep your items as far away from the belongings of others. You don’t want to spread the love to others. Wash all of your clothes on hot. After they’re washed, transfer them to a dryer, and dry them on the highest heat available. Every time you empty a bag of dirty, contaminated clothes, knot the bag up and throw it away. Once clothes come out of the dryer, you need to avoid having them come in contact with anything that hasn’t yet been cleaned. If your house is not contaminated, take the clean clothes into your house. If you’re away from home, or your house is infested, bag them up in a fresh trash bag. Tie it shut, and label the bag as being clean (or use trash bags of a different color than the ones holding the contaminated laundry). If your home is infested, then you’re going to be living out of trash bags for a while. It isn’t fun, but you don’t want to rid your home of bed bugs, only to find out that they used your dresser as a bomb shelter to hole up in.
If you have clothes that are fragile, well… hope and pray that they can tolerate a bit of abuse. Some people have reported success with washing and drying them according to the label, while carefully avoiding contaminating other items, and only then throwing them on the dryer for 30 minutes on high heat. Ultimately, it’s up to you. You can also try dry cleaning your fragile clothes, use the method for unwashable items described below, or just throw them away. Please note, if you throw away any clothing, bag it up first. You may want to write “BED BUGS” on the side of the bag, if its common for people in your neighborhood to go through trash cans. Please don’t donate your clothing to a Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other donation center. They don’t have the means to deal with bed bug-infected clothing, and you will only cause the problem to spread.
Now, its time to deal with your other, unwashable belongings. Simply doing a visual inspection isn’t adequate, as bed bugs can hide in laptops, electric razors, and alarm clocks. When you’ve gone to all the trouble of dealing with your clothing, you don’t want to chance it and end up with thousands of hungry little six-legged friends. If you live in a sunny area, you can place all of the infected items into sealed plastic containers, and set them out in the sun for the day. Bed bugs can’t tolerate temperatures of more than 115 degrees for more than a few minutes. Leaving the container in the sun for several hours will ensure that no cool pockets exist that can harbor survivors.
If you have a chest freezer, you have the option of freezing your items instead (please don’t do this with electronics that have LCD screens, and other similarly fragile products that can be damaged by moisture or cold). Bed bugs can survive temperatures of 0 degrees Fahrenheit for more than three days. Use a thermometer to make sure that your freezer can reach temperatures equal to or below 0°F, otherwise bed bugs or their eggs may survive. If you go the freezing route, you’re going to want to leave your items in the freezer for about five days, if not longer. You want to give yourself some wiggle room, as some items may take several hours to drop to the freezer’s temperature. Try not to open the freezer while your bed bugged items are in it, as this may raise temperatures just enough for bed bugs to recover, and thus be able to ride out the last couple days of their winter vacation.
Once your debugged items are removed from the freezer, make sure that they are not placed anywhere near contaminated items. If your household is infested with bed bugs and is currently being treated, store the cleaned items at a friend’s or relative’s house, or keep them in sealed containers or knotted trash bags placed in a clear, uncluttered space.
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