OMG, my couch is infested with bed bugs in Princeton, NJ

Bed Bug Quiz: You think that you just found bed bugs crawling around on your couch in Princeton, NJ. What should you do?

If you answered, immediately get that disgusting couch out of the house, that would probably be a winning answer on the “Family Feud” TV game show. However, while removing the couch may seem, at first blush, like a great idea, it's actually one of the worst possible things you can do! I’ll explain why shortly, but the best thing that a homeowner can do is contact a pet control service that has trained bed bug specialists on staff. 

Why should you not remove the couch before a professional inspection and opinion? The primary reason is that you can easily make matters worse and turn a localized easy-to-treat infestation into a larger multi-room infestation. If you fail to take the proper precautions when moving infested furniture,  you can easily infest other rooms of the house as you're taking the couch through those rooms to the outside. As you slide the couch around, the movement and vibrations alone can send bed bugs parachuting off the couch like WWII paratroopers. Once on the ground, they’ll scatter to the closest hiding spots, under your baseboards and the smallest cracks and crevices they can find.   

So, you're probably asking yourself, if I should not move the couch, what should I do? The best course of action is to call a professional. A trained bed bug specialist will be able to properly assess the best way to treat any infested furniture you want removed from the home. For example, a thorough vacuuming all of the surface areas of the couch, including the underside , will drastically reduce the number of bedbugs that could potentially fall off as the couch is being moved and jostled about.

There is another issue as well. Do you want to be the one doing the vacuuming? If you do not have the proper vacuum, you could potential he be causing yourself even more of a headache. If you don’t have the right type of vacuum with the right suction, you won’t be able to suck up all the tiny nymphs and eggs, and you may well wind up with a bed bug-infested vacuum cleaner that will turn your machine into a bedbug “taxi,” carrying them throughout the house. The only thing worse than throwing out a couch is also throwing out a perfectly good vacuum cleaner along with it. 

Professional  technicians have the proper HEPA vacuums to do the job as well as the proper chemical applications to take care of the bugs. Time and time again, we are called into homes whose homeowners have first attempted DIY treatments using over-the-counter products or “wisdom” gleaned from the Internet. Inevitably, the situation is made worse, exacerbating the problem. DIY treatments makes it the process to rid your home of bed bugs harder and longer. By the time we get there, the bed bug populations have increased over a larger area and have become more entrenched in the home.