Does Poor Hygiene Cause Bed Bug Infestations?

People often associate household insects like spiders and cockroaches with poor hygiene, and with good reason. In homes that are cleaned, vacuumed, and trashed every day, you will rarely find roaches or ants. However, if your neighbor isn’t as tidy, you’ll still have a hard time getting rid of those parasites. And there is a whole category of insects and critters that are simply curious by nature and fly, crawl or jump in search of new unoccupied habitats. Basically, there are two types of insects that can infiltrate your home: attracted by poor hygiene (roaches, ants, fleas, flies, and some types of spiders) and those that simply enter your home due to adverse weather (for hibernation wintry). ) or favorable general conditions (your house is a suitable place to live). The second group is much larger: spiders, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, etc.

Let’s take mosquitoes as an example: it doesn’t matter if you wash clothes or vacuum the floors daily if you live next to a lake or a river. You will still have a lot of mosquitoes and you will need to take special precautions against exactly these insects.

In general, I would classify bed bugs in the second group, although they seem to be some of the representatives of the first (fleas) and can cause a lot of discomfort at night. Still, there is little direct connection between bed bug infestation and hygiene. That is not to say that it is worth the effort to maintain a high level of hygiene. While you may not fully prevent a bed bug infestation in your home, you may be able to identify a bed bug infestation in several hours instead of weeks or months. When you have all kinds of bugs in your room, it’s hard to tell what bit you because the markings are almost the same. But if you know for a fact that you only have occasional flies and nothing else, you’ll be alarmed if you wake up one day with small, itchy red bites on your legs and arms.

However, there are some tips that will help you improve your chances of keeping your home safe from bed bugs. Some of them could be considered hygiene suggestions, while others are just prudent measures:

• Inspect things or clothes that are brought from a potentially contaminated place. Be on the lookout for bed bugs or their telltale signs, like fecal stains and nests. It’s pretty simple to kill these pesky bugs by throwing them out of your home or running your clothes in the hot water wash cycle;
• As with bloodsucking forest ticks, check travelers’ clothing and luggage, especially if there is a bedbug outbreak in the region;
• Inspect the exterior cracks of the building;
• Get rid of other carriers of parasitic agents such as mice, rats, birds, and bats. They can bring into your home not only bedbugs, but also a bunch of even more harmful insects;
• Carefully inspect and clean all second-hand furniture, beds, mattresses, and bedding. The use of second hand contaminated bedding is the main cause of bed bug infestation and you would do well not to use it;

Apply basic sanitation measures if you have discovered an infestation, such as:

• vacuuming the floor;
• empty the vacuum container outside;
• wash clothes in hot water;
• sealing gaps in the plaster to prevent nesting;
• brush the mattress;
• using a zippered mattress cover;
• get new bedding;
• using sticky boards is less effective but possible;

Hygiene is very important to stay in control of your home, but you will probably need the help of a professional if you have a bed bug infestation on your hands.