Bed Bug Home Preparation Checklist

Bed bugs have rapidly become the most serious of all pest problems and as fate may have it, they are the most difficult to control. Suffering a bed bug infestation does not mean you keep an untidy home or that you live in unfit conditions. They are extremely common and indiscriminate. The presence of bed bugs does not speak of your personal hygiene habits or socioeconomic status. You can pick up these professional hitch hikers in many ways, ranging from a piece of furniture, to a guest in your home, to riding home in your luggage from a hotel. It is usually difficult to tell how or where the problem started, but if you find one in your home, you need to treat your home. Bed bugs can lay 50 eggs at a time and in 5-6 weeks those nymphs are ready to lay their eggs. The problem can get out of hand very quickly.

The first step in this process is an inspection of your home or apartment. The technician needs to get into your home & verify the problem is present. The following are some steps to follow to help your technician when he does his inspection.

*DO NOT use any over the counter products! Using these products will push the bugs further into hiding & make the elimination process more difficult. DO NOT TURN YOUR MATTRESS ONTO ITS SIDE. THIS MAY MAKE THE BED BUGS RUN FURTHER INTO HIDING.

*Remove all your bedding from your bed, including mattress pads, dust cover and/or mattress covers, sheets, comforters, dust ruffles, pillows, stuffed animals. The mattresses need to be BARE.

* Pull your furniture away from the wall. The more room you leave for the technician to see your baseboards, night stands, back of furniture the more through his inspection will be.

So if it is confirmed that you do have bedbugs, don’t panic. You will need to follow the checklist provided to prepare for treatment. Preparation is essential for the success of any bed bug program & the more thorough you are in preparing your home or apartment, the faster and more effective treatment will be. The technician WILL NOT service your home or apartment if it is not prepared. Make sure you go through the entire list & have it done prior to your initial treatment. When you feel as though you are 24-48 hours away from being finished, please contact our office for your initial bed bug treatment appointment. If you are in an apartment complex, the management will give you a date to be prepared by.

The following are the steps you need to do to prepare your home or apartment for treatment:

*Remove cloth covers from bottoms of box spring and furniture. Throw these covers away OUTSIDE. Note: If these are not removed, the technician will remove & discard during treatment.

*Strip ALL beds of ALL bedding. This includes pillows, sheets, blankets, stuffed animals, mattress covers, mattress pads, comforters, dust ruffles etc. The mattresses need to be BARE. Put these in garbage bags & tie them. You will need to launder these on the day of your initial treatment. Throw away those used garbage bags. *IF you choose to launder these items before your initial treatment, DO NOT BRING THESE ITEMS BACK INTO YOUR HOME BEFORE YOUR INITIAL TREATMENT*

*After these items are washed & then dried on the HOTTEST setting possible, you may then put them in NEW garbage bags & tie them.

*When you Initial treatment (1st spray) is finished, you may put your bedding back on your beds.

*If you choose to throw away mattresses, furniture, curtains, rugs or bedding… YOU MUST WRAP THESE LARGER ITEMS WITH PLASTIC WRAP & BAG THE OTHER SMALLER ITEMS BEFORE DRAGGING THEM THROUGH YOUR HOME.
*Remove & bag all curtains from infested rooms and launder these the same way as the bedding. DO NOT hang them up until after treatment.

*Remove all wall hangings, including mirrors, pictures, paintings etc. Leave in room to be treated.

*Remove ALL clothes from dressers, closets, armoires, bureaus etc. This includes drawers under beds, or any other place you may store your clothing.  Place them in garbage bags & tie them. ALL of these items then need to be laundered & dried at the HOTTEST setting. Place into new bags after laundering. DO NOT put back until AFTER your initial treatment.

*IF laundering all of these items is not possible, you still need to remove them from dressers, closets etc and place them in boxes or totes in the middle of the floor to be treated.

***NOTE by not laundering the clothes, the process of eliminating the bed bugs may take longer***

*The technician needs to spray in all the areas you have stored clothing.

*Pull/move all furniture away from walls AT LEAST 12 inches. The technician needs access to ALL the baseboards in your home or apartment.

*Elimination of clutter or piles of things around your home will help you get the quickest results. This leads to less hiding places for bugs.

***You, your family members & animals MUST be out of the home or apartment during ALL treatments. NOTE: Fishtanks can be covered. It is against regulation to allow you to remain during treatment. You must be vacate the home for at least 4 hours from the time the technician does your treatment***

***The technician WILL NOT service your home if you refuse to vacate during this time***

***The technician WILL NOT service your home if you have not put substantial effort into accomplishing this checklist***

Now that the initial(1st) treatment is over, you can put your laundered clothing away. You will see an increase in live bugs, this is normal. The removal of bed bugs is a process, there is no way to exterminate them in one treatment. If you are seeing live bugs, that’s alright. There is nowhere for them to go that hasn’t been treated & has a layer of spray on it. Please be patient with the process, the spray will kill them.

The technician will return once a month to do another treatment. You will not have to do the same preparation as before but there are a few things you must accomplish every month prior to him coming.

*Vacuum baseboards & floors weekly. This will give the technician an idea of new activity or the patterns of the bugs.

*Remove ALL bedding off the mattress and box springs again. Launder them the same way you did prior to the initial treatment. You may put them back on after each treatment.

*Remove any clothing or clutter off the tops of furniture. The less clutter the better. Again, less places for bugs to hide.

*Move your furniture away from the baseboards again, at least 12 inches. Again, this will make the process of eliminating these bugs quicker & more effective.

*You, your families & animals will again need to be gone for 4 hours from the time of treatment.

As you can already see, bed bug elimination is an extensive process. There is no one treatment that will eliminate these bugs. Customer preparation is the MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in the speed and effectiveness of the elimination. Thank you for trusting us with your problem. Please be patient and do what is required for each visit and we WILL get this resolved.

Sincerely,

Four Seasons Pest Control