Keeping A Clean Home To Keep Away Pests
We all wish spring cleaning was only a once-a-year necessity, but for anyone hoping to keep a pest-free home, that isn’t always an option. The biggest motivation to cleaning house? Keeping a clean home to keep away pests is quite literally the most cost effective form of pest control requiring only your time.

Save Yourself Future Headaches
While you may think the worst it can get are ants, mosquitoes, gnats and fruit flies; it can get a lot worse. Bed bugs. While the common notion for those game-changing bugs is that they can only be brought into your home after travel or through your mattress and furniture, you’re wrong. It turns out, those bed bugs thrive in the mess that can build up around the house. According to the EPA, reducing clutter in your home gets rid of any hiding places those pesky bugs can find.
Moving on from bed bugs to pests in general, another benefit of keeping a clean home means that you are starving out any potential unwelcome guests. That means keeping those loose crumbs and food waste off the ground and right into the trash. Experts say sealing up boxes and bags of food, cleaning up spills, and limiting your meals to the kitchen or dining room will prevent the spread and outbreak of pets. Something else to remember, and some may not even consider this clutter or a mess: food being left out overnight. According to the EPA, leaving food out overnight can stir up those pests’ appetite.
Keep Your Trash In Mind
Some more ideas to think about. Where do you put your trash cans in your home? Turns out, the placement of your trash can play a major factor in creating or eliminating a warm cozy home for those buggers. Experts say that the farther away you place from your back door, the better.
Be sure to close the lid tight, and don’t let the trash overflow so the trash can lid won’t shut. Consider that an open invitation to the bug & pest hotel, with unlimited vacancy. And before tossing out those cans or sources of food, if you can, give them a quick wash.
Although it may be a pain, the cleaner your trash, the better. Turns out mom was right to rinse out the soda cans with water!


How Pests Damage Your Interior
Now if you have a clutter-free, food and mess-free home, there’s another factor you need to think about. Cockroach experts say roaches can live up to a month without food and water. So what else can you do to keep your home clean enough to keep them out? The EPA says: Dry them out! A typical mess you’ll see around the house, and arguably no one’s favorite chore – those messy dishes that can pile up in the sink.
You may try to convince yourself that throwing some water on those dishes and letting them sit is OK, but hold that thought! Roaches can swim – yikes! That means the quicker you get to cleaning those dishes, and the less time they sit in the sink, it’s another welcome source of comfort taken away from those pests.
No matter how much preventative action you take, and how clean you keep your home, some pests will always find a way to get into your home. There’s no denying that fact. But like that old adage says: cleanliness is next to godliness. And that applies to pest prevention! Whatever you can actively do to prevent them, the better your home will be.
That includes cleaning up the clutter, prevent the spread of food waste around the house, keeping the sink clear and without water soaking for a long time, and making sure your trash is thrown away and stored neatly. The more you work to keep your home clean, the less money you will have to spend on eliminating them.
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Sources:
“Protecting Your Home from Bed Bugs” EPA, https://www.epa.gov/bedbugs/protecting-your-home-bed-bugs