If you have young children, then you need to come up with a comprehensive plan for keeping pests out of your home. With small children, you can’t rely on heavy duty pest sprays and chemicals to keep the bugs out, and rat poison is entirely out of the question. Instead, the best approach is to use a mild amount of organic, child-safe sprays around the darker corners of the house and set up your home to be unfriendly to pests in the first place.
Keep Your Home Clean
Many parents don’t realize that their homes are filled to the brim with items that might be attracting pests. When your home is messy, insects and rodents will have plenty of places to find shelter and gather food. Occasionally deep cleaning every room in your home is going to be an important component of your pest control plan. You must also be sure that you clear away food and dirty dishes as soon as you are done eating. Of course, you’ll also want to keep your kitchen floor swept, counters cleared every evening, and food sealed tightly away to avoid attracting ants.
Keep Your Yards Clean
In addition to keeping your home clean, you should also ensure that your yard isn’t filled with clutter. Many critters prefer to spend their time outside, but they are still going to need shelter. When you have piles of toys or leaves, they might choose those locations for their nests. It is also a good idea to make sure that you don’t have any standing water out in your yards where pests could hydrate themselves.
Prevent Entry
Sealing up your home is one of the easiest and most effective ways to prevent a pest infestation. While you won’t ever be able to prevent every bug or rodent from getting into your home, sealing up just a few of the biggest openings could greatly reduce your risk of an infestation. Luckily, sealing those openings is a relatively easy task that usually requires nothing more than some all-purpose caulk and vent mesh.
Schedule Regular Service Calls
While you can do quite a bit on your own to prevent infestations, you will probably need professional assistance at some point. Scheduling regular service calls with a pest control expert is going to ensure that you keep your home pest-free. One of those individuals can help you come up with a comprehensive plan for deterring local insects and rodents from coming onto your property. They should also be able to provide your home with child-safe sprays in various unfrequented corners of the house to further keep the bugs out.
Keeping pests out of your home is going to require a little bit of work, but those extra steps are going to pay off. If you aren’t vigilant, then bugs and rodents could quickly invade your home and bring your life to a grinding halt and affect the health and safety of your children. Of course, you don’t want to sacrifice their health with toxic chemicals, either, so the best way to balance the two is to have a comprehensive system in place with lots of natural pest deterrents.
Author Bio: Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. If you are concerned about keeping pests out of your home, she highly recommends speaking to professional pest control companies such as Highland Pest.