How To Clean Your House To Get Rid Of Scabies
Wash Your Clothes and Bedding Daily
When it comes to killing scabies around your house, the most important thing you can do, is to wash your clothes, bed sheets, and pillow cases every day. Your clothing is the number one item in your house that will cause you to get re-infestated with scabies mites. Every morning, you need to put on a clean set of clothes that has not had contact with your dirty clothes. Then put your dirty clothes in your washing machine, on the hottest setting.
The same thing applies to your bed sheets, and pillow cases. They are the next biggest cause of re-infestations, after clothing. You need to do the same thing with these. Change all your sheets and pillow cases at least once a day, and wash them on the hottest setting.
Vacuum Your Carpet and Furniture
In order to get rid of mites that are in your carpet and furniture, I recommend that you use a steam cleaning vacuum. The high heat from this type of vacuum will kill scabies, as well as, bed bugs, dust mites, flees, bacteria and fungus. Not to mention, it will make your carpet look and smell like new.
If all you have is a regular vacuum, you can sprinkle diatomaceous earth over your carpet and furniture, let it sit for 15 minutes, then vacuum it all up. You can get diatomaceous earth from amazon here.
Disinfect Hard Surfaces
Scabies mites are not likely to live very long on hard surfaces, like a table top or a door nob. But, it is still a good idea to disinfect everything in your house, to be safe. You can use any household disinfectant that you have available. I personally use watered down bleach in a spray bottle. Hear is how I do it. I add one tablespoon of bleach for every four cups of water, which should be just the right amount amount to fill up a 32 ounce spray bottle. Spray this on every hard surface of your house, and let it sit for two minutes. Thin you can wipe everything down with a dry rag, and your done.
Wash Stuffed Animals and Fabric Toys
Stuffed animals and fabric toys, harbor the most bacteria of anything in your house, and they are perfect places for scabies mites hide. When tested by researchers, 1 in 4 household stuffed animals, were shown to contain traces of fecal matter.
Most people don’t ever wash a stuffed animal, from the time that they bring it home from the store, to the time that it gets old enough to be thrown in the garbage. Add to this, that stuffed animals are constantly on the floor, carried around by kids, or outside in the dirt. Makes them accumulate bacteria and other microscopic bugs, very quickly.
You should gather up all of these toys and throw them in your washing machine, and set your machine to cold, because hot water can melt the glue used in some stuffies. If you have a very old and fragile stuffy that needs to be washed, you can tie it up in a pillow case, before putting it in the washing machine, to prevent it from getting damaged. Most stuffies can handle the normal wash cycle though.
Throw Away Your paper products
If you have paper products that cannot be washed, such as used paper coffee cups or paper napkins, do not keep reusing them. It is best just to throw them away, because they can get contaminated with scabies mites, after being touched repetitively, or held for a long periods of time. Other items include paper straws, paper plates, magazines, old mail, paper drawings (that your kids draw and magnet to your fridge), and paper crafts, like origami.
Wash Your Pets
Pets, like cats or dogs, can become infested with the same type of scabies mite that infest humans. When dogs get scabies, it is referred to as sarcoptic mange, and when cats get scabies, it is called notedric mange. If your pet gets scabies, it can be even harder to get rid of, than it is for people. I wrote an article about how to treat scabies in your dog or cat, that you can read here. Dogs and cats have a lot of hair that can carry the mites all over your home, then when they get hair on your, bed, couch, or rug, it is then contaminated. So, it is best to take preventative measures, and wash your pet off with soap or shampoo. There are specific mite killing shampoos that you can use for your pet.
Declutter Your House
Having extra clutter around your house, just makes more places that mites can hide, and more cleaning for you. So you can use scabies as an opportunity to get rid of all the things that you don’t use anymore, that are just taking up space in your house. Here are some ideas of common items that people never use, or don’t really need. Multiple sets of salt and pepper shakers, paper weights, old cds and dvds, old electronics, clothes that don’t fit, worn out toys, kitchen appliances that you never use, empty bottles, and multiple pairs of hats, scarfs, and gloves.
