1. When you travel, put your suitcase in a place less likely to house bedbugs—like a metal rack.
2. Shine a penlight behind the hotel headboard and look for dark fecal stains. Pull back bedding and look for fecal stains on mattreww seams and ticking.
3. If you wake up with red welts, all laundry goes into a plastic bag outdoors, then into a hot cycle, then into a hot dryer. Five or ten minutes on high heat kills everything. Cold will not kill eggs or all the adults.
4. Don’t buy used bedding or bedding from street sales.
5. Don’t buy bug spray and battle it yourself. Get a good company to do it professionally.
6. Either get rid of your box spring and mattress, or at least get a bug-proof zippered mattress cover that keeps them trapped inside for at least one year
(from Freydkin, Donna. ‘They’re Ba-a-ack for a snack’, USA Today, 2007 Nov 7, p13D)