Pest Prevention Tips to Safeguard Your Home

Prevent Dengue and Zika symptoms by taking steps to keep household pests like the Aedes mosquito away. Ensure your home is clean and pleasant, as it plays a crucial role in your everyday life. However, it's important to remember that pests can hide in unseen areas. Alongside maintaining hygienic living conditions, be aware that pests such as the Aedes mosquito can lead to severe symptoms such as prolonged high fevers, joint pains, and headaches. To avoid these issues, follow these helpful tips for keeping unwanted visitors out of your home.

1. Remove Food Sources

Common household pests like ants and roaches are drawn to food and water. As a result, they tend to be attracted to dirty dishes, leftover food, and even small food particles lurking in pantry cabinets. To keep these pests at bay, it's helpful to promptly clean up any spills or messes involving food and water. Regularly emptying your trash and giving your eating area a quick vacuum or wipe-down after meals also prevents the accumulation of crumbs that can attract pests.

2. Keep Spaces Clean, Tidy, and Dry

Pests love dark and damp places where they can relax. Don't forget to take care of these often overlooked areas in your home to keep pests away:

• Under cabinets and sinks: Take out everything and thoroughly clean the entire area, paying close attention to hard-to-reach corners. Get rid of unnecessary items to minimize hiding spots for pests.
• Behind refrigerators: Clean up spills and fix any leaky pipes to eliminate water sources.
• Water-holding containers like vases, pails, and toothbrush holders: Remove stagnant water, dry them off, and keep them upside down.

While some pests require more space to reproduce, the Aedes mosquito can breed in water as small as a 20-cent coin! To prevent mosquito breeding and protect your family, here's a simple checklist to follow:

Photo: National Environment Agency Singapore

3. Spray For Extra Protection

Once you have a regular cleaning routine in place, it becomes less likely for pests to be attracted to your home. Here are some easy sprays you can use to further prevent pests:

• For ants and roaches: Combine water with lemon slices and a few drops of eucalyptus or peppermint essential oil. Spray this mixture at areas where these pests may hide.
• For lizards: Create a spray by mixing water with pepper and chili powder, then apply it to corners.
• For mosquitoes: Use insecticide to spray dark corners around your house. The most effective repellents against mosquitoes contain DEET (N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide), picaridin, or IR3535 as the active ingredient.

4. Screen and Seal Entrances

Even in the most tidy homes, it's possible to come across unwanted visitors from time to time. One way to address this issue is by installing magnetic window screens, which can block lizards and bugs while still allowing ventilation. These screens are easy to remove and clean when needed.

To prevent pests from entering your home, it's important to seal any cracks and crevices on walls, ceilings, and ledges. You can use silicone sealants to effectively close off potential entry points and make your home more pest-resistant.

If you're looking for more advice on maintaining your home, you can explore the latest resources or consult our guide on essential flat maintenance tips.

Source: mynicehome.gov.sg