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You may be able to ignore a pest infestation in its early stages, but once it gets out of control, your home can become a battleground for germs. Soon enough, mosquitoes will be buzzing in your ear in the quietness of the night, ants will be marching in and out of your kitchen cabinets, and cockroaches will be scurrying around in your bathroom. Sounds disgusting and unhygienic, right?

This is why pest control is so important. Getting your home free of infestation is the first thing you must do to keep you and your family safe. Sometimes, we think that we can handle difficult situations and attempt to YouTube solutions to all our problems, including DIY-methods of pest control. However, taking matters into your own hands may not always prove fruitful. Here are some things you might possibly be doing wrong when trying to rid your house of pests.

1.  Not Discovering the Root of the Problem

We know it can be tempting. You notice a big, rusty cockroach scurrying away with some leftover overnight crumbs and you feel so disgusted that all you want to do is grab a spray and kill the cockroach before it exits the room. The world would be so easy if you could get rid of the lone cockroach and move on with your life.

Thought you solved the problem? Wrong. You’ll notice more cockroaches the next day, and the next. Of course, they won’t be the same as the one you killed! However, the other cockroach friends will soon be picking up leftover food crumbs, almost salivating over the food that you and your family enjoyed the previous day. 

The truth is, getting rid of visible pests such as cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes, and ants is not as easy and simple as spraying them. It is important to find the root of the problem and use effective pest control to rectify the situation. To survive, bugs require food, water, and a house. Without these, they will die.

If the windows in your house have unsealed gaps, or if there are spaces in your home’s foundation or around the doors, you are only inviting pests in and providing them with all the things they need to thrive. If you leave food uncovered for days or have standing water in your garden, your house will be more vulnerable to pests. If you do not provide these insects with what they need, they will die out and immediately vacate the comfort of your home, desperate to find another lounging. 

While killing visible pests is necessary, you must also find their friends who will be hiding in secret spots. If you wish for long-term pest control, don’t forget to resolve the root of the issue!

2.  Using Generic, Store-Bought Pesticides

Each time you go grocery shopping, do you grab the nearest can of insect spray, thinking that it is the solution to all your pest problems? Unfortunately, if you use this spray on a line of ants, your problem will not be solved. In fact, you’d be making it worse.

Ants are known for their heightened senses. When you use a cheap, store-bought aerosol spray, the ants will detect it immediately. Even though the spray manages to kill visible ants, the other ants will be alerted. Instead of finding a new home, they will retract and send other armies of ants home. Together, they will find a new way to enter your house and feed on your food. Moreover, sometimes spraying ants can encourage a process known as “budding.” This means that the ants who survived the attack will bring in another colony and thrive in your home. You will find your home infested with double the number of ants climbing up every possible surface. 

One of the best ways to get rid of colonies of ants- hidden and visible- is to use the bait method. This means leaving something sweet out in the open so that ants can be attracted to it. However, mix poison in it so that any ant who eats the food, dies. Usually, the scouts who are sent into the open to look for food find the bait and bring it back to the nest to share with the other ants. Only this time, they will be bringing poisoned food which will manage to kill all other ants, including the queen. 

3.  Not Placing the Mouse Trap in the Correct Spot

Mice are the ultimate annoying pests to ever exist. Not only are they unhygienic, but they also bring disease into the house and can infect your entire family. You can set a mousetrap very cleverly on your kitchen floor before hurrying to bed, but this will not solve your mouse problem. In fact, when you wake up the next morning, you will see that the mousetrap is untouched.

This is because mice operate in a certain way. When they scurry around, they use their whiskers as navigation to climb up walls and small spaces. Despite a shorter route, they will take their usual way to reach their home or to devour leftover food. Hence, if you place a mouse trap randomly around the house, it will not yield results. To successfully get rid of mice, simply place the mouse trap perpendicular to the wall. The bait side of the trap must face the wall, not the open air. Carefully determine what the best position for the mousetrap is based on where you find most droppings. 

Before wasting too much time on DIY-pest control methods, consider contacting a professional pest control company that can get rid of all the insects and pests in your house once and for all. AntsPlus provides effective solutions so that you and your family are kept safe at all times, and all pests are eradicated from your home.