How to move out of an infested home without bringing bugs with you
Pests like fleas and roaches can easily hitchhike in your belongings to a new residence, threatening your fresh start or family members' homes. To prevent transferring the infestation, you need a deliberate strategy to treat, seal, and inspect items before they cross the threshold of your new place.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1using indorex in the bedroomDid this help you?
- 2flea bombing the bedroomDid this help you?
- 3inconsistent flea treatmentDid this help you?
- 4Throwing away most furnitureDid this help you?
- 5Keeping things in a moving truck for a few daysDid this help you?
- 6Covering drains religiouslyDid this help you?
- 7Leaving nothing outDid this help you?
- 8Using sticky traps for windowsDid this help you?
- 9Inspecting the new unit and putting up sticky traps in advanceDid this help you?
- 10putting the dog's water bowl away overnightDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“We lived in an apt for 15 years that slowly grew an infestation of roaches. It's disgusting, we felt a lot of shame about it, and we are moving mainly because of it.”source ↗
“How can we prevent taking them with us? What steps would you suggest we do to minimize this?”source ↗
“Roaches get into my dog's water bowl, I plan to put it away overnight but in the event a roach contacts the insecticide and gets into the water and my dog drinks from it, is there a danger to the dog?”source ↗
“Since alpine transfers from insect to insect can it transfer to the dog and harm the dog?”source ↗
“I really need some suggestions on what I can do to avoid bringing fleas in to my parents flat as I genuinely don’t know how much longer I can deal with this ‘infestation’, especially taking it to a new home.”source ↗
“I want to make sure the flies won’t follow me and I won’t have the same issue again. They have caused me SO much anxiety!!”source ↗
“is there any way they could follow me from one unit to another?”source ↗
“I’m absolutely terrified that they will follow me and I will have to deal with the same thing for the next year.”source ↗
“I just want to make sure there’s as small of a risk as possible that I bring them over!!”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 7How to make sure roaches don't move with you
- 2How to avoid bringing fleas home on your clothes
- 3Swept up rodent droppings and panicking about hantavirus
- 6How to stop my pets from attacking each other
- 17How to get strangers to stop petting your dog without asking
- 5Found a single flea, how do I prevent an escalation?