Do you know how to get rid of bed bugs with household items? It’s perfectly natural to want to eliminate a bedbug infestation without spending a ton of money on professional-grade products, or treatment by a pest control operator.
When people discover that they have bedbugs, they often turn to do-it-yourself recommendations from discussions on the internet.
These suggestions might include one or several of the items featured here among other things, let’s take a closer look at each item and how they might be used against bed bugs.
How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs with Household Items
1. Dilute Alcohol in Water
First up is the most commonly recommended tool by far. Rubbing alcohol diluted in water. This is suggested because alcohol can kill bed bugs on contact and evaporates shortly after.
So is considered safe for use. Pretty much anywhere in a home. Well, alcohol can kill bed bugs on contact. It’s not going to kill nearly enough bed bugs to be considered effective in lab studies, even 99% concentrations of alcohol, only killed between 40 to 60 percent of the adults that were sprayed. On top of that, alcohol has no long-lasting effect.
It doesn’t affect bed bug’s eggs in bed, alcohol is basically an attempt to fill the role of a context break, which is an insecticide spray that kills bed bugs on contact. These sprays can be found at our store for around 15 dollars per bottle and are proven to kill at a higher rate than rubbing alcohol.
Bed bugs could manage hair contact sprays with a couple of residual sprays and you have a combination of chemicals that will kill bed bugs quickly now and keep killing them over the next few weeks.
Read also: How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs
2. Using Essential Oils
The next recommendation is a mixture of essential oils. You might see one of many oils based on online discussions. Whether it’s clove oil, cedarwood, lavender, or a combination of men’s toils.
The use of these against bedbugs dates back centuries and is encouraged by lab testing that shows these oil successfully kill bed bugs.
However, those tests tend to use bedbugs that do not have the opportunity to feed on anyone in real-world scenarios where the bed bugs can still reach a person and feed after being sprayed.
They usually survive the main reason people seem to favor the essential oil option is that is considered a natural and chemical-free alternative to pesticide sprays.
What they don’t realize is that in today’s home, pesticides are carefully regulated by the EPA, to make sure that they’re safe for indoor.
Use the EPA also requires that health and safety guidelines are included in the product label, and MSDS, to ensure that anyone who uses a spray has instructions on how to use it safely and effectively when used correctly.
Even our strongest bed bug, sprays won’t have any effect on you, but they will kill bed bugs more effectively than any mixture of herbs or Oils.
Read also: How to Use Bed Bug Covers to Prevent Bed Bugs
3. Using Doubled-Sided Tape or Vaseline
Another common suggestion is to use, either double-sided tape or Vaseline. The theory is that you can stop at most from climbing the legs of your bed by applying these to the legs. Unfortunately, after a report from customers as indicated the solution simply doesn’t work.
I hear all the time about bed bugs crawling right over Vaseline, carpet tape, and other adhesive traps like glue ports. If a trap method does not effectively stop bed bugs I wouldn’t consider it.
Instead, I would recommend a set of climb-up insect interceptors. These are Pitfall traps that go onto the legs of your bed and trap bed bugs. And it’s how come line it falls. It’s too slick and smooth ground climb out.
Interceptors have been proven over the years to be effective, and are an essential part of our recommended treatment process.
4. Using Clothes Iron, Pressure Steamer, and Blow-dryer
The last items in our do-it-yourself bedbug arsenal, are our clothes iron, and a blow-dryer. These are recommended because bedbugs are susceptible to heat.
Exposing them to a certain amount of direct heat will kill them, but now this is true and bugs will die immediately when exposed to at least 180 degrees of heat.
However, these items are not the right tools for the job. Clothes iron might reach the temperature needed to kill bed bugs, but the heat won’t penetrate deep into soft materials to where bed bugs might be hiding.
You also can’t iron areas besides clothes and sheets like cracks and crevices of walls, floors, and furniture. A hairdryer might seem like a safer, way to kill bed bugs, but their maximum temperature is rarely more than 150 degrees.
Heat level can kill bed bugs but only if you maintain the heat over them for several minutes, so unless you want to follow each bed bug, you see around the hairdryer until they eventually died. You’d probably be better off just hitting them with a thing just to be clear.
You can kill bed bugs with heat. It’s just a matter of using the right equipment. Pressure steamer is the weapon of choice for killing bed bugs on contact.
Since their steam can surpass 200 degrees and can penetrate deep into soft materials, like mattresses and upholstered furniture. You can also use a steamer on more than just clothes or other fabrics.
A steamer can kill bed bugs hiding along with baseboards floorboards windows, seal more frames, and the edges of the carpet.
If you need to treat items, that can be laundered or steamed, you can use a portable bed bug heater like a bug or thermal strike these L can safely treat items, like books papers CDs, and dry clean only clothing.
Not only are our bed bug eaters an effective part of a bed bug treatment process, but they’re one of the most popular prevention tools on the market.
When you come home from a trip, just put your suitcase in the heater, zip, it shut, and turn it on and just a few hours. Any bed bugs are eggs hiding in your belongings will be dead.
Conclusion
Basically, a lot of do-it-yourself, bedbug recommendations are for people, looking for a cheap and chemical-free way to solve the problem. And unfortunately, this recommendation is don’t always pan out loggers and forum posters usually aren’t professionals.
They haven’t done the research and they tend to not have much experience getting rid of bed bugs themselves on professionals who need to treat an infestation. They don’t reach for rubbing alcohol or cedar oil or a blow dryer. They use a proven treatment process with a combination of proven products.
About The Author
