Bedbugs anywhere in the house cause a state of panic and fear of being harmed by those tiny blood-feeding parasites.
Imagine the tension you might have when you see a bedbug on your bathtub or bathroom wall!
But, Why Would Bed Bugs Be In The Bathroom?
In many cases, bedbugs are carried to new environments by human beings. They will take advantage of your clothing or bags and enjoy a ride from one place to another. Therefore, for bedbugs to be in your bathroom, you probably must have carried them on your clothing or towels to the bathroom.
Many humans fear bedbugs due to their parasitic character.
Unlike roaches and other small parasites that feed on food particles in a home, bedbugs depend on blood for survival.
For this reason, they won’t stay in a bathroom for long before they get to your cloth or towel again, ready to be moved to another place in the house.
Six Reasons Why Bedbugs Are Present In The Bathroom
Several human activities can facilitate the presence of bedbugs in a bathroom.
Here are some of the reasons;
1. Laundry Basket
Whenever you carry bedding, pillowcases, or clothes in the basket, you can easily carry bedbugs with them.
Even though washing clothes helps kill the bedbugs, you should put them in a dryer with the highest power setting to completely kill the bugs and destroy any laid eggs.
2. Neighbors
There are chances that your neighbor has set up DIY bed bug bombs, and the bedbugs are scattering all over the neighborhood.
Bed bug bombs do not kill the parasites but make them run away for safety.
While escaping their bombed habitat, they can easily get into your bathroom through pipes or vents.
3. Your Office Has Bedbugs
Bedbugs can also attack your office cabinets and furniture.
They will then get to your clothing and go with you home.
When you take off such clothing in a bathroom when taking a shower, the bug will remain in the bathroom.
4. A Neighbor Has An Infestation
One of your neighbors might be having a bed bug infestation that they are dealing with, and you are not aware of.
Some of the bedbugs in a neighbor’s house can move straight to your bathroom through the bathroom windows or vents.
Such bedbugs move because they fear being captured by the neighbors’ eradication activities or are possibly seeking a new habitat.
5. Public Transportation
You might have traveled recently to a place where you picked a bedbug unknowingly.
Maybe you got it from a train seat, airplane seat taxi, or public bus chair where an unknown passenger had dropped it, or the bugs have just made the place their habitat.
When you get back home and go straight to the bathroom, you can easily drop the parasite on the floor or bathtub.
6. Shared Bathroom
If you share your bathroom with a roommate, they may unknowingly drop a bedbug in the bathroom, which you will meet when you visit the bathroom.
What To Do When Bedbugs Are In Your Bathroom
That moment that you find a bed bug in the bathroom, there are several ideas on how to deal with it.
Do not rush to kill the tiny thing but instead, collect it safely in a transparent trap and check if it is male or female.
If you cannot determine the sex of the parasite, you can call in a qualified person in parasites and insects to help you determine the gender.
If it is female, then there are chances that it has laid eggs in the bathroom.
You will need to clean and destroy such eggs.
There are some people who fear tiny parasites and cannot risk picking them up to cross-check if it’s male or female. If you are one of them, try the means below.
- If it is near a pipe opening, sink, or bathtub, you can pour water on it, and it will die because bedbugs cannot swim. Preferably use warm or hot water to kill the parasite completely.
- Clean out other insects from the bathroom, if any, and in the process, you will be cleaning out bedbugs too.
- Bedbugs can not survive without food. Once blood is their main food, you can stop visiting that particular bathroom for a while, and the bed bug will die of hunger or move out of your bathroom.
- Check out the dark corners because those bugs like hiding in the dark spots of a room. You might be surprised to find many of them hiding in the corners and cracks on the wall.
- Thoroughly clean your bathroom to avoid bed bug infestation. Bedbugs love human blood and like staying in dark and dirty places.
- Check your bedroom too because there are high chances of infestation in the bedroom and one of the bugs fell to the bathroom.
- Clear out your laundry basket to ensure no bugs are hiding in the basket. Wash the clothes with warm or hot water and dry them up with a highly powered clothes dryer.
- Apply pesticides that can kill the bedbugs. If you notice a significant bed bug infestation, you can use chemicals to spray all over the dark spots to help kill the parasites. But if they keep reappearing even after you spray them, you should call an exterminator to help out. This option is usually costly, but the results are worth it.
Conclusion
Bedbugs in a bathroom are a very rare scenario in many homes.
Bedbugs don’t like bathrooms because of the slippery walls and floors.
Seeing it in the bathroom simply means you helped it get there on your clothes or dirty bedding.
