Somebody's Been Sleeping In My Bed A few weeks ago a got a frantic call for help from my mother after she woke up covered in tiny red spots.
  She was absolutely freaking out - certain she had some incurable disease.
I raced over to her house in a bit of my own panic.
There were only a few spots but they did look kind of nasty.
I asked her when she noticed them.
She said they were just there when she got out of bed that morning.
I suggested we go look in her bedroom for spiders or whatever and on further investigation discovered she had bed bugs! Apparently, the new antique nightstand she found the day before at a yard sale had more than just a bit of dust on it.
Those tiny little hitchhikers were rampant.
She freaked out again and was so grossed out she threatened to move immediately.
I did some research online and found only a couple of options to help her get rid of them.
  Call the exterminator or use nasty over the counter chemicals.
  Not happy with either option we decided to steam the little suckers! I own a steam cleaner that I use for my everyday cleaning.
  I use it often to kill the dust mites in my mattresses and upholstery.
I felt totally confident it would work on her bed bug problem.
After pulling all her bedding off and setting it to wash in hot water, we thoroughly vacuumed off the mattress, pillows and the carpet surrounding her bed.
  We then got to steaming.
  We steamed the mattress making sure we covered the entire surface in both directions.
We paid special attention to the folds in the piping all around the edges.
We then flipped the mattress over to repeat the whole process on the other side.
The box springs got the same treatment.
  Wanting to make sure we had gotten rid of all traces of the bed bugs we methodically vacuumed and steamed the carpet all the way to the baseboards.
She wanted to toss the new nightstand but I talked her into letting me give it a meticulous steaming.
I knew the jet stream of steam would instantly kill the live bed bugs and any eggs they had laid in the crevices and corners.
I really was a nice piece of furniture and it wasn't its fault it had been invaded! My mom was concerned that all the steaming would leave her bed and pillows to wet to sleep on that evening, but by the time her bedding was laundered and dry, so was her mattress.
  She was thrilled that such a nasty problem could be taken care of so quickly and easily!  She was much relieved to go to bed that night on a clean bug free, chemical free bed.
Disaster was averted again! Thank you Sargent Steam for having such a great product.