How To Get Rid Of Bed Bugs

So I have heard the hype about bed bugs and how they live in some apartments, and a lot of the time you can’t do anything about it, and a lot of people ask themselves, how do I get rid of bed bugs? I mean who wants to move into an apartment, and the first night or two that you sleep there you find out that you are not living alone. You eventually find out that you are the main course meal for your roommates, the ones that never show themselves, the ones that you rarely see, and when you do get the chance to see them, they are dead. The reason that I hate these little blood suckers so much, is because they leave these little bites on you all of the time, and its just the fact that there are tiny blood sucking bugs crawling on you why you are sleeping, is just plain disgusting.

There are many ways that your house or apartment can get an infestation with bed bugs, but here is my personal story on how I think my apartment got infected with these dang little bugs that have nothing better to do than to feed on me once every couple of days. I did a nasty thing, I worked at an apartment complex and a lot of times people that move out leave some stuff behind, like furniture, and sometimes complete bed sets. This was a brand new bed set that somebody had and it was a king size. I was an idiot and decided to grab it, I was financially unstable and I really needed a mattress to sleep on for me and my girlfriend, I was really sick of sleep on the carpet with just some blankets and a few pillows.

So about a month or so after I had my “new” king size bed in my room, my girlfriend and I had started noticing some weird insect looking bites on our body, which I found out were bed bug bites. Then just a few days after that we had seen a bed bug, yes, bed bugs can be seen with the naked eye, and they look disgusting. After about a few weeks we got tired of giving free rent to bed bugs, and on top of that we got sick of our bodies being on the front buffet line for free, so we immediately trashed the mattress. Of course I didn’t know much about bed bugs at the time, and I thought that by just getting rid of the mattress full of bed bugs that they would be gone forever, and for good. Then I started reading up on them, and began to see the light, they can hide anywhere, between cracks and crevices, behind outlet plates, in your clothes, basically anywhere that is inconspicuous. Bed bugs will live, if you don’t kill them all, they will come back, bombs and spray don’t work, you need to kill them all, to do that you have to find them. So how do you find bed bugs? There are many ways that this can be done, here I will explain how to get rid of bed bugs. Go to your local bed store or whatever, and get yourself a dust might mattress cover, doing this will prevent the bed bugs from getting into your mattress and laying eggs, this is the first step that I had taken when I started noticing bed bug bites all over me. Luckily for me, it wasn’t that bad of a situation, meaning it wasn’t a major infestation, to test out just how bad, or not bad, my bed bug problem was, I decided to make my bed and mattress almost impossible for them to get to.

First thing I did is I went to the hardware store and I bought some double sided tape, the strong kind, cost about 20 bucks but well worth it to find out how many bed beds you really got crawling around waiting to take a bite out of you. Then I pulled the bed and mattress about 8 inches away from the wall, this way the bed bugs couldn’t get to me from the wall, knowing that they love to hide up in cracks in the ceiling, especially if you have pop corn ceiling. Then I went to the frame of the bed and wrapped the double sided tape around all four legs, and just for some extra protection I wrapped the double sided tape all the way around the bottom base mattress. Now if I don’t let my sheets hit the ground while I am sleeping and I don’t push the pillow 8 inches to the wall, the bed bugs have no way of reaching me. Remember, bed bugs are wingless insects, so they cannot fly, not only that, they are not very mobile at all, so they don’t stand a shot in hell of getting to me. The next morning I closely examined the double sided tape, and sure enough I had found a couple of stuck, soon to die bed bugs. That is one of many ways on how to get rid of bed bugs.

Watch Out For The Bed Bugs

Bed Bugs are found everywhere worldwide, every continent and every country. But how do they find their way into your home ? It’s really not all that difficult, they can travel in your clothes, in your luggage, they can get to you by swapping furniture with somebody so be careful of who you are trading or buying furniture from. If somebody is giving away a mattress I would stay away from that offer because they are probably giving it away for free for a reason, I had to learn this the hard way unfortunately and I will never accept a mattress from anybody ever again. So that means don’t ever ever get and abandoned mattress no matter how new and good it looks.

Common spots for the bed bugs to hide out are inside crevasses inside mattresses and they can also live in walls which in the past has been a problem for apartments and especially motels and hotels. So if you have to stay at a hotel for a night or two try and keep your luggage away from the furniture, that way if the hotel does have an infestation they have a lesser chance of getting a free trip into your home.
With that being said if your home or apartment does have a bed bug infestation simply moving to another house or switching apartments isn’t going to do much. There is also an assumption that bed bugs are more common in messy homes, as this is untrue, bed bugs are not attracted to dirt they are attracted to your blood. If you have a messy room the only thing that is going to do is give the bed bugs more places to hide, as if they don’t already have tons of places to hide out until your sleeping soundly.

Bed Bug Basics

Everyone that has had a problem with bed bugs want to know how to kill bed bugs, but before we get into that let me tell you a little about these small night crawling blood sucking insects. Bed Bugs are becoming a common problem and a huge nuisance in our modern day age. Adult bed bugs are oval shaped, they don’t have any wings and they also have a reddish-brown color to them. The adults can get between 4-5 millimeters and they can be seen with the naked eye. Bed bugs are slightly transparent which means you can see your blood inside them which would appear to be black.

A bed bugs favorite time to feed on its host (you) is generally right before sunrise. Although they can feed at any time of the day or the night feeding right before sunrise is when they seem to be most active. Bed bugs are attracted to its host by body heat and the carbon dioxide that we exhale. They can hide in many of places, this includes inside the mattress, any cracks or crevasses in the mattress, in walls, especially in small cracks, inside outlets, inside your dirty laundry, inside your dresser, in your blankets and sheets.

Bed bugs cannot live without a host, in most cases this means you. They need your blood to stay alive, although bed bugs can live up to a year without feeding. When a bed bug bites you the bite is painless. But sometimes it can leave a bump like a mosquito bite on you from the saliva that they inject into you. Bed bugs are not very mobile, they are very slow and will most often hide about 20 feet away from dinner, again this means you. If you notice insect bites on you then you might have a bed bug problem and it should be seen to immediately since females can hatch about 10 eggs per day. There are many methods on how to kill bed bugs, but the best solution is to get a professional exterminator, or you can continue to read what I have to say, and I will lead you in the direction and teach you how to get rid of bed bugs.