Check for Bedbugs
Bedbugs are no longer confined to seamy rooms on the wrong side of town. They can be found everywhere, from the homes of the rich and famous to 5-star hotel rooms. Bedbugs can be easily carried home with you in your luggage, souvenirs, or in children’s toys. You’ll want to know how to check for bedbugs when you stay in a hotel, when you suspect they may be in your home or when you are considering buying used furniture.
Contents
Steps
Before You Check
- Get clothing out of the way. If you're checking in a hotel room, make sure to place your luggage and other belongings in a clean bathtub or on a rolling luggage rack that is off the floor and away from walls or furniture.
- Put on medical gloves. Bedbugs take in the blood of other humans and if you smash one you could get that blood, with any diseases it contains, on you. Plus your fingers may be going into some grungy places.
- Grab some tools. Grab your tools, a flashlight with a strong beam and an old credit card.
Checking a Bed
- Start by examining the bed linen. Remove all the bedding down to the bottom sheet.
- Use a light. Run your flashlight over the sheet looking for excrement or bloodstains. If the linen has just been changed you probably won’t find anything.
- Continue to the mattress. Remove the bottom sheet and examine the mattress. Use the flashlight to look for excrement and bloodstains on the top surface of the mattress. Look for shed bedbug skins and eggs.
- Use a credit card. Use the credit card to run along the mattress seam, holding it open to look with your flashlight. You may see live bedbugs hiding there, skins or excrement.
- Look at all buttons, straps and tags. Run the credit card under any buttons to chase out any hiding bugs. Examine any straps, and look under any tags on the mattress.
- Flip the mattress if you can and check the other side. Watch for fleeing bugs as you do so. While the mattress is in the air, check the rails of the bed frame under it.
- Move the bed away from the wall. Quickly shine the flashlight on the wall behind it, looking for fleeing bugs. Then examine the wall for stains from excrement or small spots of blood.
- Examine the underside of the bed frame carefully. Bugs may be hiding in the seams between pieces of wood or in the holes for screws.
Checking Other Furniture
- Check furniture. Check any piece of upholstered furniture thoroughly as you did the mattress, using the flashlight and your credit card. Turn it over and look at the underside.
- Inspect other areas where people sleep, such as a fold out couch. Don’t forget cribs and bassinets.
- Check pillows. Inspect the seams of decorative pillows.
- Inspect any nightstands or bedside tables. Turn them over, move them away from the wall, pull out any drawers and flip them over. Run the credit card in crevices. Inspect hollow legs.
- Check dresser drawers. Take the clothes out of dresser drawers and shake the drawers out over a clean white sheet, looking for bugs, skins or excrement.
- Be thorough. Check the seams and underside of dresser drawers with the flashlight and credit card.
- Check clothing. Take the clothes out of closets and shake them over a white sheet. Examine the seams of heavy clothing like coats and under collars.
- Shine your flashlight on the walls of the closet. Move all remaining items from the closets and inspect the walls with your flashlight.
- Don't forget objects in the room as well. Look inside, under, and around all objects in the room, lamps, radios, clocks, TV’s, computers and so on.
- Inspect any toys in the room, especially ones used in the bed or close to it and that are stuffed.
- Inspect pets’ beds. This is another place where bedbugs love to hide!
Checking Around the House
- Start in the bedroom where you suspect bedbugs the most. Start with the bed, proceed to the rest of the room (working outward from the bed), and then check other rooms in the house.
- Look for loose wallpaper and look under it. Similarly, you'll want to check behind picture frames and mirrors as well.
- Check the folds of curtains and behind them. You are more likely to find them lower to the ground but this does not mean you should neglect the upper areas.
- Check rugs and carpets. Look under throw rugs and around the edges of carpets. This is another time where the card and light come in handy.
- Move all furniture away from the wall and check the back of it. If you can turn it over inspect the bottom.
- Inspect behind light switches and outlets, baseboards and moldings. You will need other tools for this. Remove outlet and switch covers and shine the flashlight inside.
- Check moldings and baseboards. Run the credit card behind moldings and baseboards if you don’t want to remove them.
- Check appliances. Move appliances away from the wall; shine the flashlight on the wall and on the back of the appliance.
- Don't neglect the spaces underneath. Sweep under large appliances like refrigerators then get down and look under them with a flashlight.
- Check the laundry room. Pay attention to the laundry room. Inspect dirty clothes; look carefully at hampers and baskets, particularly wicker items.
Tips
- When traveling, it’s smart to know how to check your room for bedbugs when you check in. When you enter hotel rooms make bedbug inspection the first thing you do. You’ll want to avoid the whole hotel if you spot signs of bedbugs. Just moving to another room is not a wise idea since bedbugs easily travel from room to room.
- Do yourself and others a favour: Once you know a place has issues with bedbugs - report them on a bedbug registry site.
- Used furniture may fit your budget but if you bring home bedbugs and have to pay expensive exterminator fees to get rid of them, it won’t be much of a bargain. Make sure to inspect all used furniture thoroughly.
- If you or a family member has unexplained bites when waking in the morning it’s a good idea to do a home inspection.
- Bedbugs can feed on pets, although they prefer humans. But pets do not carry bedbugs on them. A pet bed or toy could however, carry or contain bedbugs.
- Bedbugs do not attach themselves to humans. If a bug is attached to you it’s probably a tick.
- Bedbugs like to attach themselves to clothing if you are in an infested place. Also, movie theaters are known to have infestations.
- Be careful.
- Make a bedbug trap if inspection fails and you still think you have bedbugs. Follow the directions at this site: . This trap is not going to eliminate bedbugs; it will merely collect some for you if they are nearby.
Warnings
- Don’t pick up furniture set out by the road, especially if it looks unusually nice. People discard bedbug-infested furniture and the bugs are not usually killed by cold or heat while sitting outside.
Things You’ll Need
- Medical gloves
- Flashlight
- Credit card- old one preferred
- Tools for removing switch plates, molding etc.
