Are YOUR College Kids Bringing Home Bed Bugs from the Dorm?

If there’s one stage of a family’s life that offers up the most changes, it has to be when your children head off to college.

For many families, the summers between school years bring a whole new dynamic – as well as something that you may not have experienced before: bed bugs.

While you may think of bed bugs as a uniquely urban concern, bugs don’t know any difference between a mattress in New York and a mattress in Louisiana.

Anywhere your child goes to school, they may be exposed to bed bugs!

Studies show that bringing home bed bugs from dorms isn’t as uncommon as you may think. Here’s why:

Reasons Bed Bugs Come Home from Dorms

If you’ve ever been in a dorm building, you’ll likely notice that it’s not quite like an apartment building. These are often more like summer camp rooms, with very thin walls.

That means that if one room gets bed bugs – say, if one student brings them from home in their luggage or linens – it’s very easy for those bed bugs to spread to other rooms.

Another common concern is that kids can be messy.

Young college students just coming from home and high school may leave their clothes on the floor, may not wash their sheets as often, and may not pay close attention to the cleanliness of their space. This makes a room a prime breeding spot for bed bugs.

Most dorm rooms have wooden beds, which are porous and offer bed bugs a place to hide in between school years. When your child arrives at the school, it’s important to check the furniture for signs of bugs. Buying a plastic mattress encasement can also help stop bugs from attacking your child in their sleep.

Stored luggage is another concern. If a student had bed bugs at home, those bed bugs are almost certainly in their luggage. And because they keep their luggage stored in their room, right where all their other things are, it’s easy for those bugs to travel to their other things.

Finally, college kids tend to be very social, visiting each other’s dorm rooms, heading to frat and sorority houses, going out to theaters, and generally traveling around to multiple areas where they can both pick up and spread bed bugs. This means that it only takes one student to bring bed bugs from home to spread those bugs to nearly the entire campus.

How to Stop Bed Bugs from Coming Home with Your Student

Here are some suggestions for keeping your child from bringing bed bugs home from college:

First, be sure that your child understands that room cleanliness and personal hygiene are very important for keeping bed bugs away. They should have a schedule for washing their sheets and laundry regularly, and they should also understand why it’s important to never share laundry or linens with anyone else in their dorm. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your child is safe from bed bugs, as much as they can be.

If you suspect that your child does have bed bugs in their college luggage, the best thing you can do is to call a professional right away before the infestation spreads to the rest of your home.

If you can catch them early, before they leave your child’s room or luggage, the cost will be lower, and it will take just one quick application to get rid of the problem.

You can get an estimate on the cost of bed bug removal by calling us at (800) 391-2565 or contacting us online.

Keeping Roaches at Bay This Fall

As fall rolls around, it means many things for the residents of Louisiana.

Cooler weather, shorter days, holidays coming up, and guests of all kinds.

While you welcome your friends and family, there are some guests you don’t want...One of those is roaches.

Autumn Brings Roaches Indoors

As the weather cools downs, roaches start to head indoors to escape the weather.

Just like all insects, they don’t have the means to regulate their body temperature, so they must seek out warmth to stay alive. In addition to coming inside, they also like to hide in piles of fallen leaves and other debris.

Since these are often raked up near houses, roaches can start to multiply near your home. In these ways, the cooler weather is responsible for the increase in roaches you may see around this time of year.

Tips for Keeping Roaches at Bay

If you want to keep the roaches at bay when the cooler weather hits, we have some tips for you.

• Be sure that you aren’t piling up raked leaves near your home. If you have to rake leaves, keep the piles well away from any structure, or collect the leaves in yard waste bags to be discarded immediately.
  
• Be sure that your garden mulch isn’t too high. This can give roaches a place to burrow and multiply, around your home. Many people put extra mulch on their gardens in the autumn to protect plants and prepare the soil for winter.
  
• Be sure that your gutters aren’t filled with leaves and debris. Filled gutters can allow roaches to come into your home under the eaves.
  
• Be sure to follow regular pest control measures as you would year-round. Keep sugar, fruit, and other foods put away or zipped up tight. Roaches need a food source to survive. Be sure to keep pet food tightly sealed as well, especially if you keep it in the garage or other areas that aren’t as tightly secured as your home.
  
• Get great tips from experts. You can check out the Pest Gazette from the past to find some great general tips for keeping your home free of pests or check out our website at Fischer Environmental to learn more about cockroaches and how they can get into your home. Our blog is also full of great tips for keeping pests away from your space.

Regular Pest Service Keeps Your Home Cockroach Free

One of the best ways that you can avoid roaches in the fall is to schedule a regular pest control service every year. This is because cockroaches have a unique method of finding their way back into homes that they have already been in. They emit a chemical trail in every place they’ve ever been, and other cockroaches can follow these trails. To them, it’s like a map that leads them right to a source of food and warmth.

By having a regular pest service every year, you can prevent this chemical trail from being left to attract new roaches.

That’s a very important part of keeping roaches out of your house in the fall, but you have to be proactive before the roaches get near your home for this to work.

At Fischer Environmental, we can eliminate your cockroach problem with our years of expertise.

Not only will we use the right chemical pesticides to eradicate roaches, but we also inspect your home for common ways that roaches can get into your home, such as holes near the baseboards, leaky pipes, and more.

Contact us today for a no-obligation estimate and more information.