Tips and Advice on How to Control Bed Bugs and How to Avoid Exposure to Bed Bugs

Hopefully, you'll never need to know how to control bed bugs, but with the infestations of the creatures getting to epic levels, there's a good chance you'll need to find out how to avoid exposure to these nasty insects. Bed bugs are hardly little creatures, and it is surprisingly hard to control them once they get to your house.

Bed bugs feed on blood, most often human blood, and they like beds because they are inhabited by what are, to them, big buffets that spend eight hours not moving. They're also tiny and prone to living in nooks and crannies, which makes them really difficult to see and kill.

The ground level of bed bug control is hygiene. I don't mean your personal hygiene, which is no doubt splendid, but taking the proper steps to make sure you don't bring any bed bugs home with you.

First and most obviously, you need to make sure you're staying away from hotels with bed bugs. Go on the internet, do your research, and make sure that as soon as you get to a hotel room, you check the creases and nooks for bed bugs.

Second, you need to keep your clothes and bags in sealed plastic bags, only opening them when you need to get something out. If you do think you've been exposed to bed bugs, keep the bags inside the plastic bag and stick them in deep freeze for two weeks.

Once they do make it to your home, then you need to step up your game. This where we move into the containment stage, which will keep them from making a permanent home in your house.

I've mentioned the plastic bag step earlier, and this is the first steps at containment. This will keep them in their own little bubble until you can kill them. If you find that there are bed bugs in your bags, then you need to move on to the next steps.

The next step, in this case, is Vaseline. Bed bugs can't jump, so they need to make it to your bed by way of the legs of your bed. You can stop them dead in your tracks by smearing Vaseline around your bed legs. The downside to this is that the bed bugs will get caught in the Vaseline, which is fairly disgusting. But it is better than having them in your bed.

The next step after that is to purchase a bed bug mattress cover. These are specially designed covers that cover your entire mattress and box springs, sealing the bed bugs in or out. Either way, you'll keep them away from your bed. You just need to make sure to clean the cover often.

If that fails, you'll need to go for total war. The only way to really get rid of bed bugs when they've really become an infestation is to use insecticide, and not just the bug spray you find at the local WalMart. No, you're going to have to have your house tented and gassed, which can get expensive and time consuming.

Fortunately, if you follow my simple rules about how to control bed bugs, you'll never to break out the heavy guns.