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VeloraCo logoVELORACOHome Protection Desk

By the VeloraCo Research Team · Home Protection Desk · Updated August 15, 2026

8 Things Your Exterminator Tells You To Do Before They Arrive

Treatment day works or fails on what you do in the 48 hours before it. Here is the standard prep list, plus the one step nobody ever built a product for.

See the 8 Steps →

1. Strip every bed in the house. Not just the one.

Sheets, pillowcases, mattress pads, duvet covers, the blanket at the foot. Do every bed, including the guest room you have not slept in for a month. Treating one room while another sits loaded is the most common reason a second visit gets scheduled.

→ Every bed, every room

Cartoon of a parent yanking sheets off a bed while a kid drags a duvet to an overflowing laundry basket

2. Wash + dry hot. Then learn what hot does not do.

The protocol says 140°. Most water heaters top out at 120°, and in a shared building you cannot change the setting at all. Even at full heat, eggs sit down in the seams + the weave where the water barely moves. Buyers across this category report watching eggs come through the wash and the dryer both.

→ Heat alone is not enough

Cartoon of a sweating water heater shrugging while a worried washing machine waits with bedding

3. Arm the wash itself.

This is the step with no product behind it. Your detergent cleans the fabric and defends it from nothing. VeloraCo is a tablet you drop in with your detergent. The white layer lifts adults, eggs + larvae off the fiber so the rinse carries them out. The amber layer locks up to a week of protection into the fabric.

→ The laundry leg of the protocol

Cartoon of a hand dropping the two-layer tablet into a washer drum like a power-up while the laundry cheers

4. Bag it, seal it, keep it sealed.

Everything that comes out of the dryer goes straight into a sealed bag. Not a laundry basket. Not a pile on the clean side of the room. Clean fabric left open in an untreated house is recontaminated before your tech arrives.

→ Sealed until treatment is done

Cartoon of a person guarding a giant sealed bag of clean laundry in a superhero pose

5. Empty the dressers + the closet floor.

Your tech needs to reach the back panels, the runners + the baseboards behind them. Pull everything out and process it with the rest. Clothes you have not worn in a year still need to go through the wash.

→ Clear access to the furniture

Cartoon of a person emptying a dresser with a comically tall wobbling pile of clothes

6. Vacuum, then take the bag straight outside.

Seams, edges, under the bed, along the baseboard. When you finish, the canister or bag goes into a sealed sack and into the outside bin immediately. A vacuum emptied into the kitchen trash undoes the hour you just spent.

→ Out of the house, not into the bin

Cartoon of a person sprinting a sealed vacuum bag out to the outdoor trash bin at arm's length

7. Encase the mattress + box spring.

Zippered encasements are what your tech will recommend, and they are what keeps the frame from restarting the problem. Buy them before treatment day. Encasements handle the mattress. VeloraCo handles what goes on top of it.

→ Encase, do not replace

Cartoon of two people zipping a smiling mattress into a protective encasement like a sleeping bag

8. Do not sleep somewhere else.

This is the one everyone gets wrong. Moving to the couch or the spare room does not get you away from the problem, it gives the problem a second room. Stay put until treatment is done.

→ Stay in your own bed

Cartoon of a person tucked determinedly into their own bed at night while the couch sits empty

Step 3 is the one nobody sold you a product for

Steps 1, 2 + 4 through 8 have had answers for years. Bags, encasements, vacuums, professional treatment. Step 3 never did. You have been running the right instruction with regular detergent, which cleans fabric + protects nothing.

VeloraCo strips bed bugs, eggs + larvae out of your fabric and locks up to a week of protection in. It does not treat your mattress frame, your baseboards or your walls. No laundry product can, and most of an infestation is never in the laundry. It arms one step of a protocol you are already running.

50¢ a load. Works with any detergent, powder, liquid or pods.

VeloraCo Bug Removal + Protection laundry additive tablets — 60-tablet kraft pouch

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Buy 2 Get 1 Free — 3 pouches, 180 loads, $59.99 (compare at $89.97)
Sized for the wash-everything week before treatment day.

Single pouch $29.99 (compare at $44.99) · 60 tablets, 60 loads

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Strips eggs + larvae · 6 plant oils · Works with any detergent · Kid + pet safe formula*

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Run your whole wardrobe through it. If your household is not noticeably more comfortable, send back the empty pouch for every penny. 60 days, no games.

*VeloraCo is safe when used as directed. VeloraCo is a laundry additive intended as one part of a broader pest protocol, not a standalone treatment.