Buying Recycled Clothing & Avoiding Bedbugs

I bought clothing from garage sales when my children were babies. These children have been grown-ups for years. Even before they left home, I started doing most of my recycled clothing shopping at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. In the last ten years, I  shopped more at private resale stores. That is, until I had a friend who thought she might have bedbugs in her home. She and her husband paid an exterminator–with a good reputation for getting rid of bedbugs–to check their home. The exterminator agreed that they did have them in their mattress. The couple had likely taken home the bedbugs from the upscale motel they stayed in during their vacation. They just returned from the trip a few days earlier. Right after they got home, they noticed the itching and bug bites. From listening to my friend, I learned that you have to clean and treat the whole house to eliminate the bugs (as well as getting rid of your mattress and your comfortable easy chairs)! It's an exhausting cleaning job followed by an expensive exterminator fee.

Thinking about what my friend said about how they carried them home, I concluded that they could have got the bugs in their pajamas they slept in while at the motel. And, that led me to think about the possibility of getting bedbugs through buying clothes from places like the Salvation Army or the resale store where I shop.  I have to admit, I haven’t bought a piece of clothing at a resale store since hearing about how easy it is to get this problem in the home and how hard it is to get rid of the pests. I have plenty of clothing; I suffered no hardship from not shopping. But I did computer research and found that both the Salvation Army and Goodwill work hard to eliminate the possibility of spreading bedbugs through merchandise they sell. Both organizations sell the best of the donated items they receive at their stores.

Knowing this, I will still check over any clothing I get from the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I also plan to ask the owner of the private resale store  where I shop about how they minimize the risk of passing on bedbugs with their recycled clothes. And, after reading about how to eliminate bedbugs from clothes, I plan to wash any purchases right after I bring them home and dry them on as high of a temperature as the fabric allows for thirty minutes. This was recommended for eliminating bugs–put them in the dryer for 3o minutes at over 120 degrees.

Washing clothes and drying them at a high temperature when they’re supposed to be clean already seems to go against saving energy. The energy savings is in recycling. Sometimes different methods of conserving energy use other forms of energy. In this case, recycling clothing led to using water plus electricity through both washer and dryer use. If I had to take my mattress and my living room chairs to the dump to eliminate bugs, this would be more wasteful of resources. Even if I bought clothing from department stores, I would wash and dry the clothing. The new clothing is tried on by a number of people and could have the same problems as recycled clothes since bedbugs are a concern again.

Moving on to a subject other than bedbugs, I hope 2017 will be a year when more people think about how they waste energy. I’ll keep my eyes open for new ways to conserve energy and strive to be an good example of a concerned-about-my-planet citizen.