Are You Unintentionally Inviting Bugs into Your Home?
Nobody wants bugs roaming free in their home. Not only does it leave you with a creepy-crawly feeling: It can even be hazardous to you and your family’s health. Roaches, not to mention rodents, can sully household surfaces and get into food. Flies can congregate around open food sources and trash, causing a nuisance and potential harm to your well-being. Termites can consume and destroy your home’s structural integrity. But are you unintentionally presenting an open invitation for bugs to invade your home? Read on to find out if you are.
Keeping Garbage Too Close to Home
If you keep an even semi-close eye on your garbage, you’ll notice it’s a hub for pests and bugs. Trash’s odor, combined with its food-based contents, naturally attracts all sorts of hungry and buzzing bugs. Bugs and other pests are always actively looking for a food source, so it should come as little surprise that they gravitate toward your garbaged leftovers.
If your trash is stored close to your home, it doesn’t take much for bugs to make the jump to the preferred food source: your home itself. How do you cut down on bugs making your home their very own bed and breakfast? By moving your outdoor trash bin a bit farther away from your warm and inviting hearth.
Leaving Leftover Food Out in the Open
As mentioned, food is the all-encompassing driver for bugs’ behavior. It’s a safe bet that your home has food in it—in the pantry, fridge, freezer, and even on the countertops. In fact, your kitchen might be overflowing with delicious, delectable food! Well, like you, bugs also take that cue.
Bugs are always in search of the next readily available meal. Leaving out food scraps or leftovers acts as an open invitation for them. And this can happen without much second thought on your part. For instance, letting a dirty dish sit idle in the sink with dinner’s leftover scraps can easily draw bugs to it. So can the crumbs that dropped to the floor as you made dinner. Even an overfilled or overflowing garbage can be a bug magnet. Proactively cleaning and tidying up can help keep bugs at bay, as you are eliminating a potential food source.
Putting Off Home Improvement
Another draw for pests are places that are musty and damp. For this reason, roaches often opt for living spaces under sinks or faucets, especially those that experience leaks or drips. Termites also fancy homes or buildings with unresolved water issues, as damp soil helps subterranean termites thrive.
The good news concerning these “open invitation” practices? They can all be addressed relatively easily—by being more conscious of trash can placement, cleaning up after dinner prep and dinner, and fixing common plumbing problems. Need further assistance in ridding your home of bugs and pests? Contact Vulcan Termite & Pest Control for tried-and-true solutions that will send these uninvited guests packing. Plus, get more pest-related tips and tricks on our blog!