Can Bedbugs Live in Sleeping Bags in Croydon?

Bedbugs do not live on people; they hide near where people sleep and in the things people carry. A sleeping bag is both. It is slept in for a night or two somewhere else, then rolled up tight with whatever got into it and brought home. Most of the time there is nothing in it. When there is, it is easy to miss.

Where They Hide in a Sleeping Bag

• Along the zip, in the fold of fabric that covers it and the channel it runs in.
• The stitched seams that separate the filled sections.
• The drawstring hood and the toggle where the cord gathers.
• The inside of the stuff sack, especially its bottom seam.
• Any label, pocket or loop sewn into the lining.

Look in good light, turning the bag inside out if you can. You are looking for small flat reddish-brown insects, shed skins, and dark spotting along the stitching.

Sleepovers, Camps and Festivals

Children’s sleepovers are the usual route: several bags laid out on one floor, then packed up in a hurry and taken home. School trips, scout camps, hostels and festivals are similar. None of that means any of those places had bedbugs. It just means the bag was somewhere you could not check.

The simple habit is to treat every returning sleeping bag the same way, rather than only the ones you are worried about:

1. Unpack it on a hard floor away from the bedrooms, not on a bed.
2. Turn it inside out and check the zip and seams.
3. Put it straight into the washing machine if the label allows, or into a tumble dryer on a hot setting.
4. Wash or dry the stuff sack as well; it has been holding the bag.
5. Store it, once dry, in a sealed bag or box rather than loose on a shelf.

Large or down-filled bags may not fit a home machine or tolerate a hot cycle. A launderette with bigger drums is an option, but follow the care label. If a bag cannot be washed or dried hot, keep it sealed until you can ask us what to do.

If You Already Have Bedbugs at Home

Sleeping bags stored in the affected room, or in a cupboard off it, can hold bugs too, and they are easy to forget because nobody uses them. If the house is being treated, bag them in the room and either wash and dry them hot or leave them sealed until we say otherwise. Do not lend one to a friend or take one away for a weekend while treatment is under way.

The same goes for using a sleeping bag to sleep somewhere else in the home to escape the bites. Moving to the sofa or the floor usually spreads the problem to a second room. Keep sleeping in the usual bed and let the treatment work. The chemical treatment page explains why that matters between visits, and the Croydon page covers the other things that make a second treatment necessary.

Other Things That Travel With the Bag

Camping mats with foam seams, travel pillows, rucksacks and the soft toy that went along too deserve the same check. Rucksack seams and pockets can be vacuumed, with the vacuum emptied outside straight away. Floor cushions and bean bags that come out for sleepovers at your own home raise the same questions; see bedbugs in bean bags and floor cushions.

If you find something you cannot identify, keep it in a jar or on sticky tape. An inspection from £120 tells you what it is before anything is spent on treatment.

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