We share a lot of tips, advice, and tricks on this website on how to help prevent pests from disrupting your life. We thought we’d put together a listing of some of the things that you can easily be done today to help prevent pests.

NOTE: Nothing is full-proof and guaranteed. We guarantee our services, but we know that every now and then a pest problem will take a few efforts on our part to get the problem solved. With that, do not take these ‘do it yourself pest control’ methods as a guarantee that you will get rid of all bugs.

Do It Yourself Pest Control

1. Clean, and then clean some more: This method of DIY has many added benefits. A clean house feels great, even if it is for 20 minutes until your kids trash the place. Cleaning the house; vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, taking out the trash, washing rugs, arranging the pantry and cabinets will clean up many of the hiding places and food sources that bugs invade your home for. Set some time this weekend to do that spring cleaning as your first step in do it yourself pest control.
2. Do a House Inspection: Put on some grubby clothes and start to get dirty around and under your house. At the beginning of spring you want to go full tilt with this practice, but as the summer and fall move through you can inspect your house in a few minutes to keep tabs on things. Pull out a sheet of paper to take some notes, or use a camera to take photos if you like. Walk the perimeter of your home and look for oddities. You want to see not only pests, but ideal conditions for pests to insert themselves into some part of your home. Notice bushes that are overgrown (any spider activity?), check for branches that might be touching the roof or gutters, are your gutters full of debris and causing water pooling, do you see pools of water around the house due to poor drainage, do you see pest activity (termite tunnels?). All these are good observations and things you will want to fix to prevent ideal conditions. Next take a crawl under the house to look around for any other creepy activity. Look for termite tunnels, any bug infestation, leaking pipes, rotting wood, or another condition that you feel isn’t supposed to be that way (trust us, you will know). If you notice something major, like active termites, then call your pest professional (us!!) as soon as possible to get that problem taken care of.
3. Tend to Conducive Conditions Accordingly: All those things you notice about your home start to peck away at those on your to-do list. This will feel much like do it yourself pest control practice #1, you will feel a whole lot better about your house as things get tidied up. Reducing the conducive conditions for pests around your house will go a massive way in preventing pests from coming into your home and doing damage.
4. Use Mother Earth: There are plants and even some animals that you can help introduce to your home environment that will help to prevent pests from making your home their home. Experiment with what you seem to have the most problems with and start planting accordingly.
5. Use Chemicals & Traps Last: If you are vigilant about your home and keeping conducive conditions for bugs down to a minimum then you are likely going to do pretty well-keeping bugs out without chemicals. If you wish to put down chemicals then be very aware to follow the directions of the product you buy. Do not put more chemical down than ascribed, this can put more toxin in the ground and possibly come back to hurt a pet or even small children. If set traps out for rodents you suspect then do not set and leave forever. You need to actively check those traps, otherwise you might have a stinky smell and a funky corpse of a mouse or rat behind a garage shelf or fridge. That stuff will actually attract more bugs.
6. Repeat: The key to do it yourself pest control is to continue to repeat these processes. Doing them once is great, but who is to say that bugs do not start to invade the week after you do all this work. Regular cleaning and inspections to reduce those conducive conditions will go a long way. It will also tip you off to a potential problem that is outside your control, but still early enough detection that fixing it will not cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.