I still shudder at the thought of bed bugs….I had the extreme misfortune of dealing with them.  You thought Al Qaeda was hard to get rid of?  Bud bugs are crazy!  The amount of times I washed the sheets, vacuumed the mattress, steamed the mattress and had professional cleaners, short of burning my house – they were still there.  People changed homes because of them, people I know – I used to laugh.  I ended up changing countries (not just because of the bud bugs of course – but they were a big reason).

If you travel a lot or have a lot of visitors who travel a lot your chances are increase.  I think we got ours from a travel to Central Asia – even though I was very good about checking hotel beds and any red dots at the edges of the bed sheets (a big tell that the bed is infested).  But apparently there are a couple of other things I should have done when travelling:

• Never but the luggage next to the bed no matter what, keep it as far as you can on those luggage metal stools you get in hotels.
• Wash your clothes as soon as you reach home – all your clothes even the ones you didn’t wear, anything in the luggage should be washed.
• Minimize the amount of gadgets and “stuff” you take with you and if you have them try not to put them on your bed as much as possible.

If they do end up with you back home, try to do the following before their numbers grow and the become entrenched:

• Get a professional cleaner ASAP
• At first sign avoid going or sleeping in your bed anymore until it is clean
• Move all clothes and as much furniture away from your bed (including dressers, night stands or wardrobes)
• Buy new luggage and new clothes if you can (a good time to update your wardrobe)
• Get it cleaned again after a week just to be sure, the money you spend is well worth it – trust me.

You have to admire how such small critters can create such a horror show in your house, not sure really why God created them – I’m sure they have a better purpose that terrorizing people.  On another side bar, where did they live before people had beds?  Anyway you don’t want to experience these crazies, but if you do – it’s never overdoing it with cleaning to try to get rid of them, if you think cleaning something 4 times is excessive, go for 6 times.  I suddenly just got an itch thinking about them!