Today, we are going to explore how to keep your house clean to ensure your home is consistently pest-free. Even the cleanest homes might occasionally encounter pest problems, but simple, frequent cleaning can greatly reduce the chances of pest invasions.

Insects and other critters will happily make themselves at home wherever there is food and water. Here are a few easy housekeeping tasks from Molly Maid for maintaining your home.

For keeping a tidy kitchen:

• Clean daily around your refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher to remove any leftover food crumbs.
• Wipe down all kitchen counters after every meal. Leftover food particles might be enough to attract these little critters for an unintended feast.

• Before disposing of food containers and beverage cans, rinse them out.
• Store pantry food in air tight containers.
• Eat only in the kitchen and clean up after every meal. Limiting where you eat reduces the areas exposed to food residue, providing less risk for uninvited visitors.

In other areas inside your house, it is important to:

• Get rid of the clutter—stacks of papers, piles of clothing, and unneeded boxes. Pests love to hide and a cluttered home becomes a pest’s paradise.
• Pull beds away from the wall to lessen breeding grounds for bugs. Bugs like to nest in cool, dark spaces and exposing them will make these areas less desirable for local insects.
• Dust and wipe down baseboards regularly to avoid attraction to the mess.
• Properly clean all clothes before storing them in the back of your closet for winter.

When venturing outside, remember to:

• Trim trees, bushes and other foliage that might be providing a highway into your home.
• Remove any piles of leaves or debris that might be housing unwanted annoyances.

Following these suggestions may help you avoid the exterminator altogether. There is no need to give pests reasons to come searching for food and shelter in your home. You can watch Janet’s video here for more ways to keep your home clean and pest-free.

Don’t forget to send us any questions you may have and visit Debug the Myths to review any of the steps you have missed earlier in the week.

You have investigated your home and have studied and prepared for applying appropriate solutions to the problems you encountered. Now it is time for you to ensure a safe and healthy home by eliminating entry ways for any pest problems you may have.

Pests like mice, spiders, and ants seek places that fill their basic survival needs of food, water, and shelter. These three conditions are what prompt these creepy crawlers to invade your home and establish it as their own place to live and breed. Often, you can cut off their life support by eliminating one of these three key elements.  Doing so requires physical action.

In the elimination step, you actually take action to reduce or prevent pest invasions by enacting a variety of preventative methods you considered appropriate for your home environment during the previous steps in the I.N.S.P.E.C.T. process.

To effectively pest-proof your home, you are going to have to start by fixing problem areas both inside and outside of your home. The key is to tackle any problems before they become too overwhelming. Employing a good preventative strategy beforehand will save you time and money in the long run.

• Eliminate water. Remove standing water outside from bird baths, lined gutters, wheelbarrows, and inside from sinks and showers. Fix any leaky pipes both inside and out that may provide a source of water these annoyances. A lack of water will make it harder for bugs to reproduce.

• Eliminate food. Keeping a clean kitchen can go a long way in making your home less attractive to pests. Sweeping for crumbs that may have fallen and keeping food tightly sealed in containers will make it harder for these bugs to find food.

• Eliminate shelter. This action is probably the best line of defense against pests entering your home environment. In the investigate step, we learned that pests can wiggle their way into your homes through openings as small as one quarter of an inch. A simple solution is to seal up these tiny cracks and crevices with caulk from your local hardware store.

Inside your home, caulking around all doors, windows and window seals where tiny bugs can easily penetrate can prove invaluable, especially in older homes that have settled and might have more points of entry for pests.  Check under sinks for the space around where the pipes enter and make sure to seal this area too.

Now take a walk along the exterior of your home—where most pests come from. It is extremely important to seal all windows and doors with gaps that could serve as access points. Chances are, if air and light can pass through, so can pests. So even if you think the crack may be too small, seal it anyway.

Trim trees and bushes near homes so they do not provide direct routes for pests into your home. A good rule of thumb is to leave 18 inches from the plant to the foundation. Consider mowing and weeding often to reduce creating a safe haven for pesky creatures.

Most preventative methods require a little extra time but using these solution suggestions and others found at www.debugthemyths.com will be a lot less expensive than hiring a professional exterminator. Be sure to also check out Janet Hurley’s video for more tricks on eliminating pest entry.