In my last episode of my travel blog, I detailed that you are likely to encounter bedbugs when backpacking. Whether or not they decide to travel with you is a question of luck or I suppose bad luck. It is extremely difficult to determine if you actually have them in your bag on even on your clothes that you are wearing because until they feed, especially when they are very young, they are almost invisible and are very very small.
For me, I just assume that I am carrying them upon returning home and take the same precautions whether that is true or not. As someone that has had bedbugs in his home, I can assure you that this is NOT something you want to introduce to your living environment because it is an extremely difficult and potentially expensive problem to remedy.
Prevention is much more important to elimination or extermination later. Bedbugs are some of the most unbelievable resilient creatures on the planet so keeping them out in the first place is much easier than finding and killing them later.
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5mm, and this is one of the fully-grown ones
So if you have followed my instructions up to this point you have left all of your gear outside of your house and sealed it off in plastic bags, you also did the same with the clothes you were wearing at the front door and even the towel that you used to dry off with after your "welcome home shower." These things now have to be treated.
Some people think that they can just spray a bunch of bug spray all over this gear and everything will be fine but you are incorrect if you think this. Bedbugs are really good at hiding and they for some reason are very good at avoiding chemicals that would work on other insects like mosquitos, ants, or cockroaches. To this day there isn't a particularly useful trap or bait that exists for other insects. YOU are the bait when it comes to bedbugs.
The only thing that really works on killing bedbugs is heat and this means that you are going to need to achieve a temperature of 125 degrees F or 52 degrees Celsius. This can be achieved a number of ways but one of the best ones is hot water or steam. For most situations, if you can get a hot water wash onto your clothes and then transfer them to a dryer that goes above 125 degrees, this is your best option. If you are not sure that your dryer can achieve these temperatures it might not be a terrible idea to get the professionals involved or just go to a laundromat. These machines are industrial and tend to be serviced regularly so there is a much better chance they will achieve the temperatures that you need.
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That'll do!
There are going to be some things that you can not throw in the dryer such as your keys (I guess you could) and any personal electronics such as a phone or laptop and camera. These are more complicated to deal with as you can't really expose any of these things to heat. For this stuff I'm afraid I don't really have a solution other than to say that you should check them very closely for signs of bugs and honestly just hope for the best. I'm not suggesting anyone throw their tablet in the microwave to get rid of potential bedbugs. Just inspect them very closely.
This might seem a bit excessive but upon returning home it is absolutely essential that you do not introduce bedbugs into your house. These little bastards have been known to travel 20 meters or more for food (you) and can go a year without feeding and still survive.
A little bit of potentially embarrassing precaution will go a long way in this and even then there is always a chance that they may have made it through anyway. Let's hope not though. It might seem like overkill to totally disrobe outside of your house and seal everything in a plastic bag but if you had been through what I went through in order to get rid of an infestation, you would definitely agree that this is a much better alternative.
In my next installment I will explain what you can do to check if you have bedbugs and how to deal with the problem before it spreads out of control.
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