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.
- 1using indorex in the bedroom
- 2flea bombing the bedroom
- 3inconsistent flea treatment
- 4Throwing away most furniture
- 5Keeping things in a moving truck for a few days
- 6Covering drains religiously
- 7Leaving nothing out
- 8Using sticky traps for windows
- 9Inspecting the new unit and putting up sticky traps in advance
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, 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 ↗
“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 ↗