They hitchhiked in. They can’t be shamed out.
First, the truth that matters most: bed bugs have nothing to do with cleanliness. They arrive as hitchhikers — in luggage after a trip, on a secondhand chair, from a visitor’s bag — and they establish in any home, spotless or not. The only variable is how fast they’re found and how properly they’re treated.
The DIY cycle with bed bugs is brutal and predictable: spray the mattress with store product, watch the activity drop for a week, then meet the next hatch. The bugs retreat deeper — into outlets, behind baseboards, inside the couch — and the population comes back distributed and harder to reach. Partial treatment doesn’t fail loudly; it fails in instalments, month after month.
The prep is where homeowners earn the win. Laundering and heat-drying bedding and clothing, clearing the floor around the bed, pulling furniture from the walls — the prep sheet your tech gives you isn’t busywork, it’s what lets the treatment reach every hiding point in one pass. Follow it exactly and the two-visit protocol finishes the job; skip it and the survivors write the sequel.