Cluttered Home Poses Challenge to Bed Bug Treatment in Forked River, NJ

Challenge

Recently, I was sent to a home in Forked River, NJ to resolve a heavy bed bug infestation. The homeowners were two brothers who had lived together for more than 50 years. They traveled extensively and their home was filled with picture albums and books. However, somewhere in their travels, one of them managed to bring back an unwanted souvenir — bed bugs. A bed bug infestation has absolutely nothing to do with sanitation issues in a home. These insects feed exclusively off blood moving from one human host to the next. They can be picked up everywhere and anywhere from motels and hotels to public transportation to restaurants and retail stores, any location where people come into contact with others. They will latch onto clothing or one’s personal effects and “hitchhike” into your home.

Once a bed bug manages to get into your home and starts to lay eggs, populations can grow quickly. For bed bugs, the more harborage areas there are, the faster the infestation can spread. Reducing clutter is essential to reduce harborage areas and to make our bed bug treatment more effective. The fewer places that these bugs can hide, the better. Unfortunately, these brothers loved to travel and read and all of their home belongings reflected that. Photo albums and piles of books were all over.

During my inspection, I found several piles of books stacked adjacent to one of the beds. Examining the books more closely, I found bed bugs hiding inside the books. Tiny bed bugs and their eggs can easily hide in the spines of hardcover books. In fact, because bed bugs are very flat unless they are feeding, they can even manage to squeeze themselves between the pages. As a related matter, bed bugs can hitch a ride on library books into your home, so when checking out library books or buying used books, carefully examine them before taking them to bed with you. With bed bug infestations on the rise, reading in bed is not as safe as it used to be! 

Solution

I recommended to the brothers that these infested book piles be discarded. We cannot realistically treat bedbug-infested books, and you can’t throw books in the dryer to kill them with heat. As long as there is bed bug activity in a home, the infestation will not be resolved. A similar issue was a small loveseat covered with stuffed animals. While I could treat the furniture, I could not treat the stuffed animals. I recommended that the stuffed animals be removed from the home, but if they could not part with some or all them, at least put them in the dryer to expose the bugs to high heat. 

There were a few books that had significant sentimental value to them. I vacuumed those particular books as thoroughly as possible. They were grateful for our efforts to resolve this infestation without making them get rid of some things that meant so much to them. It’s always a tough balance with sentimental objects. After vacuuming all of the harborage areas and wall junctures, we performed a crack and crevice treatment. For bud bug infestations, it is always necessary to have at least two follow-up visits to re-inspect and determine those areas where additional treatment is necessary. These are exceptionally resilient bugs and they are one of our more challenging types of infestations. But, with that said, bed bugs are a challenge that we look forward to!