The holiday season is coming up. Whether you have family coming into town, are traveling yourself, or are planning to spend a quiet holiday at home, finding pests in on your property can quickly derail your excitement. Kitchen pests like ants, roaches, and moths can ruin a holiday meal. Spiders, centipedes, and earwigs can be an unwelcome surprise for any guests, and rodents are a potentially hazardous and destructive invader.

To make sure a busy holiday season is as stress free as possible – at least when it comes to pests – it is important to understand what risks are involved at this time of year and what measures you can take to make a pest infestation less likely.

Avoiding Bringing Pests Inside

Many pests are hitchhikers. They cling to various objects we bring into our homes or lay their eggs on them. Once they get inside, they can then start breeding and spread to other areas. Since the holiday season often involves bringing home plenty of tasty foods, gifts, and luggage, you can prevent any hitchhiking pests by:

• Inspect boxes of holiday decorations, trees, and garlands for pests before you bring them inside.
• Leave any boxes used to transport organic produce outside.
• Check through your luggage and wash all clothes after returning from vacation, even if you didn’t wear them.
• Look over shipping boxes for any bugs that might be clinging to the outside.
• Watch for pests on new packages of pet foods, cereals, flour and grains, and other food for bugs.

You can also make it more difficult for pests to get inside on their own by sealing up any cracks you find around your home. The foundation, windows, doors, pipes, and vents are all places where holes are likely to develop and allow pests inside.

Steps to Take Indoors to Reduce the Possibility of Pests

Cleaning around your kitchen will help make your space less appealing to invading pests. The areas you should focus on are your trash can, counters, and drains. You should also clean pantries and any cabinets where you store food. Vacuuming up crumbs from the bottom of the pantry and wiping up any spills will remove food residue that can attract rodents, ants, and roaches.

As a final step, go through grain based foods like flour, pasta, and cereals. Moths often live in expired packages, so those should be thrown out and replaced. Catching any contaminated food early can also help prevent the disaster of beginning to cook and realizing your ingredients have bugs.

A few weeks before the holidays begin is also the perfect time to schedule a pest control visit. ExtermPRO provides regular pest control that creates a seal around your home that bugs cannot cross, reducing the risk that you will have to deal with pests this year. To schedule your visit, call our team today.