Clutter – the ins and outs

Whether or not you live in minimalist austerity or amid agreeable clutter makes no difference to your chances of getting a bed bug problem. Once you have a bed bug problem, though, the state of your home can make a difference. Bed bugs need hiding places and clutter provides this. This makes detecting them that much more difficult. Of course, if you have extraordinary bed bug sniffer dogs like we have, this is much less of an issue.

Clutter also poses problems for traditional chemical treatments. When we do chemical treatments we always remove items under and around the bed and advise clients to keep it that way for a few weeks after a chemical treatment. This increases the chances that the treatment will be 100% effective the first time.

For our heat treatments, though, there is less of a problem. When we use heat we raise the temperature of the room to around 60C – bed bugs die at 46C – we hold it there for a couple of hours. This gives the heat time to penetrate all areas of even the most cluttered rooms.