Bed bugs love clutter, because of all the dark, cozy places it gives them to hide. Remove the clutter, and you will make your home much more unfriendly to them. I am talking about the piles of stuff in the corner, the dirty laundry, the old toys and magazines, exercise equipment, etc.

The quick and easy one is: to get rid of all this stuff.

• Throw it in the dumpster, or

• Seal it in your plastic contractor bags, and put it into storage. If you decide to put them in storage, remember that bed bugs can live up to a year (or longer) without a blood meal. They will just lie in the bag, waiting to escape. So the consensus is to leave your items in storage for 18 months, just to be sure.

Here is the pain-in-the-ass solution: clean everything and bag it.

• Clean the items with a stiff brush and or vacuum cleaner.
• Anything has little air vents that a bed bug could crawl into (like a clock, or radio, white noise maker, or air purifier), has to be opened up and vacuumed
• After each item is cleaned, seal it in a Ziploc bag to prevent reinfestation.
• If you have a lot of stuff, this option could take a damned long time, and it might not be effective, since the bed bug eggs are cemented into place, and the nymphs are able to hold tightly. So you might want to do a combination: deep clean the things you really need to have handy, and put all the rest of it into storage.

Insider Tip: Bed Bugs and Cold Temperatures

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IBedbugs and their eggs will also die if exposed to cold for extended periods of time.  Small items can be bagged and placed in your freezer for several days.  The longer the item is in the freezer, the more likely it is that the bugs will be killed, but 24 hours is the minimum.

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