Keep Bugs Out of Your Home with These Four Tips
Summer is bug season. Creepy, crawly, flying, stinging icky pests that torment us and worse are breeding rampantly during the hot months of summer. Keep bugs out of your house and off of your body with these four tips.
Don’t Invite Bugs Into Your Home
We innocently do things around the house that bugs find irresistible, ergo we give them an open invitation to come in. Such as, we serve bugs dinner by not regularly cleaning and disinfecting the kitchen. Food splatters on the back splash, can opener or blender are meals to hungry bugs and drops of water on the countertops and in the sink is a cool drink of water for thirsty bugs.
Turn off the lights or at least dim them, especially outside entrance lights. Moths and cockroaches are attracted to light,, lights near entrances will attract pests and those pests will find a way to get inside. Use yellow CFL light bulbs in door side light fixtures or install motion sensor lighting that will only come on when someone comes home.
Remove outdoor attractions so bugs won’t find your home so inviting. Leaf debris, firewood, water hose or any object that can hold water located near the foundation of your house invites bugs inside. Bugs will attend the outdoor attractions, breed and enter your home through the foundation, mosquitoes will proliferate in just a cap full of standing water, so you can imagine what they can do in a bowl or bucket of standing, stagnant water.
Go On the Defensive
Bugs will come inside even when they’re not invited, so go on the defensive and find the passages that let bugs in according to The Family Handyman . Patch or replace window and door screens with holes. Check all around the home’s exterior and caulk holes around pipes, windows and minor foundation cracks. Attach a door sweep to the bottom of storm or screen doors to keep spiders and other creep crawlers from entering your home under the door.
They’re Here!
When it’s too late and the bugs have already infiltrated your home, it’s time to fight back. Ant or roach baits are more effective than traps or sprays. The baits serve irresistible poisoned food to the bugs which they inadvertently take back to their abode with them and poison their colonies. Keep the vacuum cleaner with attachment nozzle handy and vacuum up spiders and their webs as soon as they are seen. Empty the vacuum bin into an airtight trash bag, seal and place in outside trash can.
When the DIY bugs killing methods are not yielding results within a few days, it’s time to call the professionals. Bedbugs and termites almost always require the assistance of a pest control professional , and the local exterminator is willing to deal with smaller pest problems that are just too icky and gross for many homeowners.
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