Category: FAQ

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How to Protect Against Bed Bugs

If you read the newspaper or turn on the TV you have seen reports about bed bugs. If you are like most people, you are wondering what you can do to protect against bed bugs. There are a few things you can do to make sure that you don’t end up fighting the bed bug battle.  Bed bugs are not dust mites.  They are very small but are visible to the naked eye.  They look a little like a very small tick.  If you wake up with bites or see small red or brown blotches on your sheets, you might have bed bugs.

Protect Against Bed Bugs that Come Home from College

When your kids return home from college, make sure their bags go into the garage and the contents go from the garage straight to the washing machine.  Every year we hear from families who find out that their kids are getting much more than an education at college.  Check the empty luggage thoroughly for bed bugs. Consider sending your student back to dorm life with a cover for their mattress, just as an added protection.

 Protect Against Bed Bugs That Come Home from Travels

You want to follow this same routine when you travel yourself.  Speaking of traveling, when you are in a hotel or motel, do not put your luggage on the floor or bed EVER.  Always place it on a table on the bathroom counter, or even in the bathtub.  Make it difficult to pick up any hitchhikers that may be in the room.  If you rent a car, put your luggage in the backseat.  You have a great chance of picking up bed bugs in the trunk, since that is where most people stow their bags.

Protect Against Bed Bugs at Home

At home, using plain cotton sheets will allow you to see any signs of bed bugs.  Also, encase your bed in special bed bug mattress covers.  This goes for the mattress, boxspring, and all pillows on the bed.  These special bed bug covers will keep the bugs from making a home in your bed.  Make sure you buy covers from a company that is willing to show you independent test results like the ones you see by clicking here.

Some people swear by placing your bed on risers and coating the risers with Vaseline or oil.  I understand the concept of making the area too slick for the bugs to climb up, but as a person with dust mite allergies, I personally don’t recommend anything that increases the amount of dust around your bed.  I believe that the best defense is a good offense, and by being careful about what makes it into your house you can protect yourself.

If you live in an apartment or attached dwelling such as a townhouse, you want to make sure that all areas between your unit and your neighbor’s unit are sealed.  Get out the caulk gun and be sure to seal around walls, baseboards, electrical outlets and such.

 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of expensive exterminating.
Til next time!

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How Your Dust Mite Cover Should Fit?

We get lots of questions from people trying to decide what size dust mite cover to buy for their mattresses.  Over the months, I have written lots about the different fabrics, but I don’t think I have ever addressed how the dust mite cover should fit.

How Should It Fit?

There is a misconception that the cover needs to fit tightly.  Actually, the opposite is true.  If you try to put a too-small cover on a too-large mattress you will put stress on the seams and the zipper closure.  Those are the weakest points in your line of defense against dust mites.  You don’t want any strain or stress on those seams or zippers.  So, your dust mite cover should fit loosely and not tight at all.

How Do You Measure the Depth?

Most people know what “size” their mattress is (queen, king, twin, full, etc) but they are not sure of the depth of the mattress.  To measure the depth of your mattress, you need to strip the bed down.  That means removing all the bedding, including the sheets and any mattress pad you might keep on the bed.

Get down at eye level with the mattress (only measure the mattress for depth, do not include the box spring in the depth measurement) and measure from the top seam to the bottom seam.  If you have a pillow-top mattress, take the measurement in several places.

Round Up or Round Down?

Round that measurement up to determine the proper depth mattress cover to purchase.

For example, if your mattress measures 10″ deep, you want the 12″ deep cover.  While you might be able to stretch and tug to get a 9″ cover on that 10″ mattress, chances are you are going to stress the seam or tear out the zipper in your attempt.

While the 12″ cover will give you a little extra fabric, it does not affect the dust mite protection of the zippered mattress cover.  Just take that little bit of extra fabric and tuck it between the mattress and the box spring.  Your fitted sheet will hold it in place.

Properly sized, your dust mite mattress cover will last for years and give you night after night of protection.  So make sure your dust mite cover fits right.

Til Next Time!
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Why Can’t I Just Spray The Bed?

Why can’t I just spray the bed, why do I have to have a cover?  WOW! We get that question quite a bit.  Especially when people are watching every penny and making sure that they don’t spend more than they need to get the results they desire.

I hear from people more and more who want to know why they must cover their mattress to protect against dust mites and why they can’t just spray the bed with ADMS or ADS AntiAllergen Spray.

In order to understand why, you have to understand the dynamics of how you are exposed to dust mites.

The dust mites live in your mattress and feed on the shed human skin cells.  They have burrowed down into the mattress where it is nice and dark.  They are not walking around on the top so much.  Too light there!  When you sit on the bed or move about on the bed, the force of your movement sends the particles of dust mites, their dead bodies, and their feces into the air.  Once these particles are in the air, you inhale them.  It is like a rain shower of allergens.  It is your movement that forces the particles out from deep inside the mattress.

If you were to spray the bed, you would only denature the allergens right on the top.   Even if you sprayed all sides of the mattress, you would not penetrate very far.  In order to get through a 9 inch mattress you would have to all but soak it in the denaturing agent.  So, once you had it soaked through….how would you dry it out?  See, you couldn’t!  So, you would have a wet, soggy mattress on your hands and probably looking at mold growth.  What a waste of your time and money and several bottles of spray.

When you put a zippered dust mite proof cover on your mattress, you put a barrier between you and those particles.  No matter how much you move about on the bed, the particles will lift up out of the mattress, hit the barrier and then fall harmlessly back to the mattress.  You won’t ever be exposed.

Now, that isn’t to say that I haven’t ever sprayed my bed with ADMS Spray!  Since I don’t wash the dust mite proof cover very often, I will on occasion spray the top side of my dust mite cover with ADMS Spray.  This is usually when I have stripped the bed to wash the sheets in De-Mite and am spraying the dust ruffle, comforter, and decorative pillows.  I always make sure the cover is dry before I put the sheets back on. To tell the truth, when recovering from a bad cold or the flu (and that is rare now my allergies are under control) I have been known to spray my sheets with ADMS. I know that it really isn’t doing anything more than the washing in De-Mite, but it still makes me feel better.  That counts for something doesn’t it?

Til next time!