Buying used furniture is always tempting but you need to remember that it is important to inspect before bringing any used furniture into your home. Why? We’ll put it plainly, you never know what pests could be hiding in furniture, especially used. To avoid pest infestation in your home, you need to take the right precautions when buying a used piece of furniture. By taking the right precautions when inspecting, you will get to enjoy inexpensive furniture and avoid calling an exterminator.
Here are some helpful tips on how to look for hidden pests in used furniture.
Choose Your Used Furniture Wisely:
Make sure to avoid choosing upholstered furniture. It is harder to notice if the furniture is infected by bed bugs as the person selling it may have already steam cleaned it. Bed bugs are one of the resilient residential pests. They are great at hiding and can survive many control attempts. It can take time for you to see an infestation after purchasing the used furniture. Our advice is to pick furniture made of solid materials and one that is easy to clean. Bed bugs can survive on most surfaces, such as pleats and seams.
How to Inspect Used Furniture Before Buying:
- Make sure you have white latex gloves, a flashlight, magnifying glass and a white sheet with you when inspecting the furniture.
- Place your furniture on the white sheet to help see bed bugs if they fall on the sheet.
- Using a credit card or gloved hand, run the edge of your card or finger over any creases or cracks on the furniture’s surface. Keep watching for signs of bed bugs on your gloves or the white sheet with the magnifying glass. Signs will either be the actual bed bugs, feces (which will be dark red stains) or old skin.
- Use your flashlight to thoroughly inspect any hidden or dark areas of the furniture. Bed bugs are usually hiding, so look in the creases where they aren’t visible.
- If any pests are found, place them in a container for identification
Keep in mind that bed bugs live in the most unsuspected places such as screw holes on the backside of a framed picture. Bed bugs can hide in just about anything even musical instruments, toys, bags, shoes, speakers, and more. Their flat bodies allow them to fit into small cracks and crevices less than 0.5mm in thickness.
If you bring in used furniture into your home and later find out that it is infested with bed bugs, please give us a call and one of our certified technicians will help you out.