Home »Bed Bug Tips » Buying used furniture? Here’s how to check used furniture for bed bugs. In today’s economy, everyone wants to save money. Buying used furniture or getting used furniture for free from a friend or relative can really save you serious bucks. But, there’s a catch: bed bugs. One of the single most common ways to get bed bugs in your home is through buying used furniture and bringing it into your home. Given the average cost of a bed bug treatments by a professional often exceeds a thousand dollars, it’s definitely best to insure the furniture you’re buying does not have bed bugs. To avoid having your home infested with bed bugs, it’s preferable to avoid buying used furniture or bringing used furniture in your home all together. However, we understand that this isn’t always practical or realistic. Therefore, inspecting any used furniture for signs of bed bugs before you bring the furniture into your home is critically important.
Even bringing used furniture with bed bugs into your home for just a few minutes can be the beginning of a bed bug infestation that will cost you time, sleep, sanity, and money! Inspect used furniture for bed bugs Whenever you find or are offered used furniture, the very first you should do is thoroughly inspect it for bed bugs. Be prepared, this could offend some people, but that is just the reality we live in today. Here’s how to inspect used furniture for bed bugs: Bring some white latex gloves, a magnifying glass, flashlight, and an inexpensive white sheet with you to inspect the furniture. Spread the white sheet on a flat surface, and place the furniture on the bed sheet. The white sheet will help you see bed bugs or signs of bed-bugs if they fall on the ground. Use your fingers, or preferably a credit card, run the edge of the card over the furniture’s surface. Then use your fingers or the edge of the card through any creases, cracks or grooves in the furniture.
Remember, bed bugs like to hid in small tight spaces, so running the card through these areas is critical to performing a thorough inspection. Watch for signs of bed bugs on your gloves or on the white sheet. Signs can include feces (which will be dark red stains), old skin, or bed bugs themselves. Use the magnifying glass to inspect anything remotely questionable. Use the flashlight to highlight and inspect any hidden or dark areas of the furniture. Again, these are the locations where bed bugs like to hide. They are generally not out in the open where they are easily seen. If you see any bed bugs or even signs of bed bugs, do not bring the furniture home. Treating used furniture for bed bugs Assuming you’ve done a thorough inspection, and haven’t found any signs of bed bugs, we still highly recommend treating the used furniture for bedbugs. Bring the furniture home, but do not bring it inside your home yet. Go ahead and place the plastic bag in your dryer and rip it open.
Leave the covers in the dryer and dispose of the bag in an outside trashcan. Run the covers in your dryer on high heat for at least 30-60 minutes. We recommend doing this twice. Thoroughly vacuum the furniture, including all crevices, seams, folds and hidden areas. Immediately remove the vacuum bag and place it in a tied plastic trash bag in an outside trashcan. Using a bed bug spray, spray down the furniture, insuring all areas are covered. Be sure to follow the detailed instructions that come with the spray. Allow the furniture to completely dry. If you prefer not to use a spray, you can cover the couch with Diatomaceous earth, steam treat or heat treat the furniture too. If you use Diatomaceous earth, allow the furniture to sit outside for a few days. Used furniture bed bug tips Avoid taking used furniture from dumps or furniture left on the road side. Furniture like this is generally thrown away for good reason, and bed bugs are often why. Avoid bringing used furniture into your home from high risk bed bug areas of the country, such as New York city.
Avoid used mattresses and box springs all together. They just aren’t worth the risk! Interested in learning more about how to keep bed bugs out of your home? Check out our Bed Bug Prevention page. Get FREE Local Bed Bug Exterminator Quotes Fill out our simple and easy form, and get FREE and LOCAL bed bug exterminator quotes sent straight to your inbox. Where do Bed Bugs Hide? Bed Bugs Rash and Bite Symptoms How To Find Bed Bugs In Your Home Bed bug heat treatment – The EssentialsQuestions may be edited for length and clarity. We need a new mattress for our second bedroom, and my boyfriend wants to buy a used one off Craigslist. Is this icky or eco? Or so I would have said, before I actually began researching what happens to old mattresses when they die; what I uncovered, however, is way ickier: Twenty million mattresses, heaved into the trash every year. That's in the United States alone. Here, all those springs and stuffing amount to over 450 million cubic feet of landfill space.
Lay out those mattresses end to end though, and they would stretch out over 25,000 miles -- enough to circumnavigate the globe. If picturing a ring of Posturepedics around the planet isn't enough to make you shudder, then maybe carcinogenic contamination will: Conventional mattresses contain toxic chemicals like flame retardants, formaldehyde, and phthalates, which can leach from the landfill into our drinking water. Then there's the possibility of polluting our air with even more of these chemicals, since difficult-to-compress mattresses create flammable air pockets that can increase the risk of landfill fires. And let's not forget about the sheer danger, too, for sanitation workers who regularly have to remove these bulky items manually from heavy machinery when the springs and coils get caught. So maybe your boyfriend's impulse to save a mattress from a landfill death isn't so loathsome, after all? As a friend who works in the hospitality industry recently pointed out, anyone who's ever stayed a night in a hotel (whether it's a Holiday Inn or the Four Seasons) has shared a bed with thousands of others before him.
What's the big deal about sleeping on a mattress that had one previous owner? Simply put: bed bugs. The age-old childhood bedtime caution, "Don't let the bed bugs bite!" has now become a nationwide epidemic; infestations of the blood-sucking pests have become so widespread that the Environmental Protection Agency has gotten involved. (It hosted its Second National Bed Bug Summit this past February.) While bed bugs aren't known to spread disease, they can plague those afflicted with intensely itchy bites and the bloodstained fecal mess they leave in their wake. Because they're so insidious -- surviving up to 18 months in the tiny cracks of wood furniture without so much as a morsel -- many eradication experts recommend steering clear of secondhand furniture like upholstered chairs and wood dressers altogether, let alone used mattresses and box springs. If you have a high squeamish factor and still wish to buy pre-owned, examine the mattress carefully for the telltale signs of infestation, and place it in a protective encasement before you bring it into your home.
(Beware, by the way, those "new" mattresses that are advertised on Craigslist. According to green living expert Danny Seo, those may be old curbside mattresses masquerading as new, thanks to the addition of a fresh fabric cover and a layer of shrink wrap.) But I say the risk of buying a used mattress isn't worth it. If you do wind up with bed bugs and they spread to your other belongings, you'll be sending more stuff to the landfill than just your mattress. Then, too, there are the chemicals that may have to be used in your home by a professional pest management company to eradicate the insects. (DIY pest control isn't recommended, since it can make bed bugs spread.) Is there a trusted friend or family member who could hand down a mattress instead? Your best option: Invest in a high-quality mattress made from natural and biodegradable materials. One company, Essentia, makes its petroleum- and VOC-free memory foam mattresses from natural latex, a renewable resource that comes from the rubber tree plant.