Spring break trips. Weekend getaways. College kids coming home with bags full of dirty laundry. May kicks off travel season in New Jersey, and with it comes one of the most frustrating pest problems out there: bed bugs.
Most people don’t think about bed bugs when they’re packing for a trip. But these tiny pests are everywhere. Hotels, Airbnbs, rental homes, even trains and buses. And they’re really, really good at catching a ride home with you.
Here’s the thing. Bed bugs have nothing to do with cleanliness. A five-star hotel can have them just as easily as a cheap motel. They go where people sleep. Period.
How They Get Into Your Home
It usually starts with a suitcase. You crash at a hotel for a couple nights, and while you’re asleep, bed bugs find their way into your stuff. They’re sneaky about it too. Zipper pockets, the folds of a shirt you left on the chair, the seams along the bottom of your bag. These bugs are flat and small, roughly the size of an apple seed, so they fit into spaces you’d never think to check.
Nobody feels it happen. Nobody sees it either. You zip up, head home, toss the suitcase on your bed while you unpack, and just like that, they’ve got a new address. Your address.
Check the Room Before You Unpack
This one habit will save you more headaches than anything else on this list. Walk into the room, and before you do anything, put your bags in the bathtub. Not the bed, not the couch, not the floor. The bathtub. Bed bugs can’t climb smooth porcelain, so your stuff stays safe while you do a quick check.
Now go look at the bed. Peel the sheets down and flip the corner of the mattress over. You want to see the seams up close, that’s where bed bugs leave evidence. Little dark dots (droppings), rusty colored stains, maybe even a live bug or two. They’re about the size of a flax seed when they’re young. Also worth pulling the headboard away from the wall if it moves. Bed bugs love that gap.
See anything off? Skip the room next door. These bugs crawl through shared walls all the time. Ask for a different floor entirely, or just find another place to stay.
Coming Home: Do This Every Time
Even if your trip seemed fine, play it safe. It takes about 20 minutes and it could save you thousands in extermination costs.
Don’t bring your suitcase into your bedroom. Unpack in the garage, on a porch, or in the laundry room. Everything that can go in the wash goes straight in. Hot water, then high heat in the dryer for at least 30 minutes. Bed bugs can’t survive above 120°F, which is why the CDC recommends high-heat drying as a reliable way to kill them at every life stage. Wipe down your suitcase inside and out. Check the seams and pockets. Then store it somewhere away from the bedroom. A closet near the front door, the garage, wherever. The EPA recommends inspecting luggage racks and unpacking directly into a washing machine when you get home from any trip.
Do this every trip. Not just the ones where you stayed somewhere sketchy.
Signs You Brought Something Home
Here’s what makes bed bugs so frustrating. Weeks can go by before you realize they’re in your house. They only come out at night to feed, so during the day, your bedroom looks completely normal.
The bites are usually the first thing people notice. Small red welts, sometimes three or four in a row, on your arms or shoulders or neck. A lot of people think it’s a mosquito at first. Then it keeps happening, in the same spot, night after night.
Look at your sheets in the morning. See any small blood spots or dark smears near the pillow? Pull the fitted sheet off and check the seams of the mattress, especially the corners. That’s where they leave their droppings. And if the room has a weird sweet smell you can’t explain, that’s another clue. Take a look at our guide to spotting a bed bug infestation and the steps to eliminate them if you want a full walkthrough of what to look for.
Why DIY Treatments Don’t Work
We get calls all the time from people who tried to handle bed bugs on their own first. They bought cans of spray from the hardware store, set off a fogger, maybe even threw out a mattress. And the bugs came back within a week.
That’s because bed bugs don’t just live on your mattress. They squeeze into cracks in your walls, nest behind outlet plates, hide in the joints of your bed frame. A surface spray doesn’t touch any of that. And here’s the real problem: a single female lays hundreds of eggs over her lifetime. So even if you kill every bug you can see, the eggs hatch, and you’re right back where you started.
That’s when people call us. Jersey City Exterminators will inspect your home, figure out exactly where the bugs are nesting, and treat the problem so it actually stays gone. We handle bed bug treatment across Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, and all of Hudson County. If you think you brought bed bugs home from a trip, call (201) 460-6068 for same-day service.