Bed bugs have gotten so much bad publicity that you may panic when you suspect you have them. The first thing you should do is determine if the bugs are actually present, and you're not being bitten by fleas or mosquitoes. If you suspect you have bed bugs, then you'll want to call an exterminator to get rid of them quickly and safely. Here are some things you don't want to do when you have bed bugs:
Spray Your Home Or Body With Pesticides
If bed bugs are biting you at night, then you might be tempted to spray your bed with pesticides you buy from a home improvement store, or to cover your body with bug spray. It can be dangerous to use pesticides incorrectly or too often. Common pesticides aren't very effective on bed bugs anyway, and you'll be exposing yourself to dangerous chemicals for no reason. Leave the application of pesticides to a professional exterminator.
Start Sleeping In Another Room
You can't really run away from bed bugs in your home. All you'll do is encourage them to seek you out, and then they'll spread all over your house; that makes them even more difficult to eradicate. If you can keep the bugs confined to your bedroom, it will be easier to get rid of them. You also don't want to move into a friend's house temporarily, because you might spread your bed bugs to their house as well. Instead, you can continue sleeping in your own room after taking precautions to barricade yourself from the bugs.
Sit the legs of your bed in plastic bowls coated with petroleum jelly or filled with soapy water so the bugs can't crawl up the legs. Vacuum the bugs out of your bed frame and cover your mattress in bed bug covers that zip closed to trap the bugs hiding in your mattress. These steps may allow you to sleep in a room infested with bed bugs, as long as you can keep them off your bed.
Waste Time On Home Remedies
You can waste a lot of time on home remedies that don't work; all the while, the bed bug population will continue to grow. For instance, heat and freezing temperatures kill bed bugs, but placing items in the freezer or in black bags in the sun may not reach the target temperatures long enough to do any good. Rather than wasting time fighting the bugs on your own, call for professional bed bug extermination. Even with pest control treatments, it may take some time, and multiple treatments, to get rid of the bugs completely.
I have never been one of those people who is alright with bugs running through their house, which is probably why I started focusing on pest control in the first place. I wanted to make sure that nothing would get in the way of me enjoying time with my family, so I began snapping pictures of the bugs in my house and then talking with professionals about how to resolve the problem. Within a few weeks I had an expert spraying for pests, and I was really impressed with just how effective they were. Check out this site for great tips on killing bugs.