Discovering a bed bug infestation in your mattress is frightening. Who would want to share their bed with annoying, bloodsucking pests? The answer is no one. While your first thought might be to throw your mattress away, there is no reason you need to go to that extreme. For some, replacing a mattress is not feasible. Fortunately, there are ways to treat your mattress.
Create a Safe Space
You need to create a safe space for your bed. Most people position their bed against a wall to help save space. In this instance, your best bet is to move your bed away from walls. Make sure there are no other pieces of furniture nearby. In fact, you should remove everything from around the bed, including clothing and shoes.
Bed bugs are incapable of flight and they cannot jump, so they must make their way onto your bed by crawling. Of course, they can always crawl across the carpet and up the best posts, right? The answer is yes, but you can place traps around the legs of your bed. There are traps/monitors specific to bed bugs.
Place each leg of your bed inside the center of the trap. In an attempt to climb into your bed, bed bugs will climb into the outer lip of the trap. There, they will become stuck and unable to climb up your bed our back out of the trap. Using this method of prevention, you can keep bed bugs out of your mattress.
Use Heat to Your Advantage
Extreme heat kills bed bugs. Remove all of your bedding – sheets, blankets, comforters, and pillowcases – and place them in the washing machine. Make sure you wash everything in hot water only. Afterward, move them immediately to the dryer and use the highest heat setting. Make sure you allow everything to remain in the dryer for at least thirty minutes.
In the meantime, get a hold of a steamer. Run the steamer over your mattress to help sanitize it and kill bed bugs. Make sure you steam the mattress thoroughly. You will need to steam along the surface, but make sure you pay careful attention to seams and edges. Seams and edges are where bed bugs prefer to hide and lay their eggs.
Steaming will take time and patience. Do not work too quickly. Pace yourself so you can ensure you are applying enough heat to sufficiently kill live bed bugs. It is said that bed bugs are exposed to 113 degrees of heat will die in roughly ninety minutes. If you can manage 118 degrees, it only takes twenty minutes for them to die.
A dryer usually produces 120 degrees of heat, so that is plenty to kill bed bugs. When using the steamer, however, you will want to make sure you work slowly. If nothing else, steam every inch and then go back and repeat the process one or two more times to make sure you do a good enough job.
Hire a Professional
Contact a bed bug exterminator in your area. An exterminator can provide methods of treatment that will quickly and effectively destroy a bed bug population. By the end of it all, you can be back in your bed resting peacefully without the worry of bed bugs biting when the lights go out.
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