Monthly Archives: March 2016

Staying in a hotel can be a great way to relax and get away from it all. When you’re at a hotel, you don’t need to worry about making your bed or taking care of the dishes in your sink.

However, hotel stays aren’t always completely stress free. Lately there have been a lot of stories in the news about a something of which every traveler should be aware: bed bugs.

If you’re worried that bed bugs will ruin your hotel stay, you’ll want to take a few precautions. We spoke with Fox Pest Control – Long Island to find out what a traveler can do, and they gave us these tips to help you to avoid bedbugs on your next trip.

Stay In A Well-Reviewed Hotel

Before you book a hotel, take the time to read numerous reviews. Pay close attention to any comments about the cleanliness of the hotel. Make sure that past guests have been satisfied with the cleanliness of the rooms that they’ve stayed in.

If there are numerous complaints about dirty rooms, you may want to avoid the hotel. Even if the reviews don’t mention bed bugs specifically, an unclean room is a big red flag.

Inspect The Bedding After Your Arrival

When you arrive at the hotel, take the time to examine the bedding. Pull away the covers and look at the sheets. Does everything appear to be fresh and clean?

Bed bugs aren’t always easy to spot. However, you may notice signs that suggest that the sheets in your room haven’t been cleaned recently. If you suspect that your room has dirty linens, call a maid and ask them to replace those linens with something fresh and new.

Bring Your Own Sheets

If you are worried about the condition of the sheets you will be sleeping on, you may want to bring your own sheets from home. When you arrive at the hotel, you can swap out the old sheets for the new one.

Changing sheets can be an annoyance, but it won’t take up much of your time. You deserve to have clean sheets to sleep on no matter where you are.

Bring A Portable Dehumidifier

Bedbugs tend to thrive in environments that are damp. If you remove moisture from the room, then the bedbugs will not be able to survive.

You should take a portable dehumidifier with you on your trip, especially if you are staying somewhere where the weather is muggy. When you arrive in the room, you should start running your dehumidifier immediately. Even if there are bedbugs in the room, you shouldn’t be bringing any of them back with you.

A dehumidifier can be costly, but it’s definitely a worthwhile expense. Consider buying one to take on your next trip, or upon arrival.

Wash Everything When You Get Home

When you arrive home from your trip, wash every single item that you brought with you to the hotel. Make sure that all of your clothing and other items are cleaned and sterilized before they are brought back into your home.

If there were bedbugs in your hotel, they may try clinging to your clothing and other items. If you wash everything thoroughly, and dry on fairly high heat, you’ll be able to keep those nasty bugs from every causing a problem in your home.

Bedbugs aren’t as big of a problem as you might think. Most hotels work very hard to keep bedbugs and other insects at bay.

With that said, there are things that you can do that will help to keep you safer. Make sure that bedbugs won’t be an issue for you when you are travelling. Work to rid your hotel room of any bedbugs that might be there.

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Writing is a tough job. Sometimes a change of scenery is the only way to get productive, and this is why writers retreats have long been a useful tool for wordsmiths. If you need to escape from your everyday rut and refresh your creativity, a stay in a bed and breakfast is a great way to jumpstart your writing engine.

Why You Might Need To Get Away

Although getting serious about writing involves cultivating the ability to write anywhere at any time, certain parts of the job are more demanding than others. If you’re laying the groundwork for a new story, polishing a piece to bring out its inner greatness, or working hard to meet a deadline, it pays to find a writing environment that offers you minimal distractions.

Sealing yourself off in your home isn’t really a workable option. It’s much better to find a space that’s new but welcoming. Here you can concentrate on your work to the exclusion of outside influences. This is in stark contrast to a professionally organized writers retreat. The type of retreat we’re talking about is one that can help you isolate your own ideas and can also land you in a powerfully inspirational setting that will have a positive effect on your writing.

Flexible Hosts

Writers love to use a stay at a bed and breakfast for a number of different reasons, but one of the most important is staying with hosts who are accommodating to their needs. Good B&B hosts offer a level of personalized service that ordinary hotels (even the very best of them) simply cannot match.

Whether you like a certain amount of daily interaction with other people when you’re writing or need absolute isolation, a good bed and breakfast should be able to meet your needs. B&B hosts are also excellent about fulfilling any special requests you have to make your retreat more productive. A full-service B&B (one which provides all of your meals) is also desirable for a writer, as it frees up more of your time for the business of writing.

Specialized Retreats

Of course, bed and breakfast operators haven’t overlooked the appeal that their services have to writers. You won’t go very far in hunting for a B&B for a retreat before turning up dozens of rooms and homes expressly marketed to writers. While you have to take some of these offerings with a grain of salt (see below), some writing-focused B&Bs offer you terrific opportunities.

You might try a stay in a historically-meaningful room, like the studio at Thoreau Farm. Here you can exercise your craft under the same roof that sheltered Henry David Thoreau as a child. Other writer-friendly B&Bs offer specialized amenities like libraries, literary tours, and even (in some cases) writing mentors. Many of the best writers retreats are collaborative, offering you the opportunity to stay with, and learn from, other writers.

Picking A Bed And Breakfast

As noted above, not all bed and breakfasts that market themselves to writers are created equal. You should review the offerings of any B&B carefully to confirm that it’s a good fit for your needs. Additionally, make sure you compare the pricing and features of a “writer’s” B&B to other accommodations in the area. You may be paying a significant markup for extras that won’t really help you.

As with many services, one of the best ways to get a feel for a bed and breakfast is by reading reviews from past guests. In the case of a dedicated writers retreat, you can pursue this line of inquiry from two directions. All of the usual sites which review ordinary accommodations are available to you. You can also learn more by poking around in online writers’ communities. This can help you find new options as well as teach you more about B&Bs you’re already considering.

Depending on your tastes, the perfect writers retreat for you might be monastically isolated or vibrantly busy. Whatever helps you write is worth looking into. You’ll find a range of different options in the bed and breakfast market that can meet almost any need, and picking the right place for your retreat can dramatically improve your productivity.

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