Essential Tips to Keep Your Yard & Home Pest-Free

Fighting the battle of keeping pests out of your home is a regular challenge for homeowners, especially when you live in an area with changing seasons. Pests like ants, mosquitoes, and mice are the usual suspects when it comes to invaders into your backyards and indoor living spaces. While these pests are annoying to deal with on a daily basis, they can also carry health risks that could cause further issues than minor annoyance. 

That’s why it’s important to keep your home secured and cleaned regularly to combat these common pests. In this guide, we’ll take a deeper dive into how you can keep ants, mosquitoes, and mice out of your living spaces, allowing you to fully enjoy the relaxing oasis that is your home.

General Tips & Methods to Regularly Follow

Keep Your Kitchen and Food Storage Areas Clean and Secure

It’s no secret that household pests like ants and mice are attracted to food and will do anything in their power to find their way to a reliable food source. If you stay on top of regular cleaning and securing your food and pantry areas, you’ll be off to a good start in keeping your home pest-free. Remember, mice don’t need a lot of space to move their way into your home and start getting into open food. If you can slide a pencil through a gap, then a mouse can fit through it. Take a walk around your house and look for any entry points where they might make their way through and seal them with steel wool and caulk.

It’s a good practice to store any opened food in containers with a lid that can lock into place. If mice are an ongoing issue, you’ll want to opt for glass containers. A determined mouse can chew their way through plastic, so any plastic-based storage options aren’t going to be quite as effective. 

Along those same lines, you’ll want to keep your garbage bins covered to keep pests from crawling up and into them. If you have dogs or cats, make sure to avoid leaving their food out and unsecured overnight. A wide open source of food like that is a gold mine for pests, so you don’t want to give them something open and available to keep coming back to.

Look for Signs of Daily Life from Pests

While it’s not something that you need to look for every day, it’s good to keep an eye out for any signs of critters that could be in your home. If you’re able to catch things early, you could eliminate the problem quickly before things spread and get worse. 

For mice, you’ll want to look for any small brown bead-shaped droppings, the smell of urine, or listen closely to any scratching sounds that you may hear at night. If you spot or catch any of these signs, you’ll want to pick up some traps and place them in the areas where you’re spotting these things. 

If you have a suspicion that ants have made their way into your home, there aren’t really any visual signs to look for like there are for mice, but you’ll want to keep an eye out for any traveling ants. If you spot them, you’ll want to follow the ants to determine where they are coming from or making a home. Once you find their gathering area, you can use a few different remedies that we’ll dive into later. 

If you’re spotting ants in wooded areas or begin to notice wood shavings on the floors, you may have carpenter ants making themselves at home. For this, you’ll want to enlist professional assistance as carpenter ants can cause deeper damage to the infrastructure of your home. 

Now that we’ve gone over some general tips and things to look for, let’s take a look at pest-specific prevention tips and control methods.

Pest Control

Ants

Ants are the most common household pests, invading homes in search of food and water sources. To prevent ants from coming in, you should seal any exposed entry points like cracks and gaps around windows, doors, and the foundation of your home. Keep up with daily cleaning tasks like wiping down counters, sweeping floors, proper food storage, and taking out the garbage. If you give ants a reliable source of food droppings and neglect to properly clean, you’ll develop a large infestation. Finally, you should do your best to eliminate any moisture within your home. Ants will gravitate towards these areas, so you’ll want to ensure your home is dry and without any leaks in any pipes. 

To control ants within your home, you can utilize natural deterrents like vinegar or lemon juice, and essential oils like peppermint or tea tree to disrupt ant trails. Additionally, bait traps can be another highly effective method. Simply place the bait pacs near the areas where ants frequent, and they’ll carry them back to their colony to help eliminate some of the population. If neither of these work and you’re still having troubles, you may need to hire a pest control professional to help take care of the infestation.

Mice

Mice are another common household pest that can be harmful to your home, your food, and overall health. These critters can cause damage to property and are known to spread disease or other health risks through droppings and food contamination. On top of all of that, they are just not fun to have in your home. 

The biggest key to stopping mice from getting inside your home is going to be ensuring that any potential entry points are sealed. As mentioned earlier, it doesn’t take much space for a mouse to squeeze through, so you need to thoroughly inspect your home for any possible gaps or holes. Inspect pipes, utility lines, and holes in the base of your home. Even if you find the smallest gap, seal it up with steel wool and caulk. Eliminating food sources and clutter will also help keep them away. Store your food in sealed containers, avoid keeping pet food out and unsecured, and clean up any food spill. It’s also good to keep your storage areas open and organized. Mice thrive in small, hidden places, so this will remove any potential hiding spots for them. 

There are really two big options when it comes to controlling mice in your home. The first will be traps (Snapping or live traps). You’ll want to place your traps along the walls and in areas where mice are active. Mice cannot see very well, so they tend to stay near walls. Once you find their path, you should be able to position your traps perfectly. Additionally, you can use poison baits. If you do utilize poison bait, you’ll want to be very careful with these especially if you have pets or children in your home as Ingesting this would be very harmful to them.

Mosquitoes

While mosquitoes don’t often make their way indoors, they can be quite the annoyance outside when you’re trying to enjoy time in your yard. Not only do they bite, causing discomfort and itchiness, they can also carry diseases like West Nile and Zika. While you might not completely eliminate the presence of mosquitoes in your backyard, there are ways that you can greatly reduce them. 

To reduce the number of mosquitoes, first you’ll want to get rid of any sources of standing water in your yard or patio. Mosquitoes thrive and breed in standing water, so if you regularly empty any buckets, flowerpots, and other containers that collect water, you'll eliminate a huge source of their breeding ground. Additionally, if you keep up with regular yard maintenance, that will also deter mosquitoes from visiting. Keep your grass and shrubs trimmed, and clean out your gutters to remove any build up where they might be able to hang around. Lastly, you can install a screen if you have a patio area to prevent them from getting into areas where you and others may be sitting. 

If mosquitoes are still flying around, you may need to turn to a few of these reliable controlling methods. First, you can use natural repellents with aromas and oils like citronella, lavender, eucalyptus and lemon. There are also a ton of insecticides that you can place in areas where mosquitoes congregate. If you do use insecticides, be sure to follow the instructions of whichever product you go with. Lastly, you could also consider using a mosquito repeller like this one by ThermaCELL. These create a 15 foot zone of protection wherever they are placed, keeping mosquitoes away while also looking like it's a natural part of your patio setup.

Spiders

Spiders can be beneficial guests in your home due to their ability to control and reduce the population of other insects. But understandably, some prefer to not see spiders within their home, and some species bring concern of infection from their bites. 

With that in mind, there are ways to effectively prevent spiders from being regular visitors in your home. The first thing you’ll want to do is reduce any clutter, especially near your walls and corners. Spiders love hiding within clutter and crevices, so if you keep your home tidy, vacuumed, and dusted regularly, a lot of their go-to spaces will be eliminated. The big hot spots to keep in check will be corners, under furniture, and other hard-to-reach places where they might reside. Much like the other pests mentioned already, you’ll also want to seal any potential entry points like windows, doors, or cracks. 

To control spiders already within your home, you can turn to natural remedies like peppermint, tea tree, or eucalyptus essential oils. Simply add a few drops of the oil of your choice to a spray bottle with water, and spray the mixture into any area where you commonly see spiders. You can also utilize sticky traps to catch spiders. Place them in areas where you see them most, and they will eventually work their way onto the mat and won’t be going anywhere else after.

Termites

Termites can be an especially invasive pest within your home, causing significant structural damage if their infestation is not addressed. To prevent termites from invading your home, you’ll first want to ensure that any wooded areas in your home don’t come into direct contact with soil. Termites burrow their way into wood and that’s where they cause their damage, so if you’re able to use concrete or metal barriers connecting to the soil, that will help deter them. If you do have any open wooded areas, regularly inspect them for any signs of termite damage. You’ll want to look for any mud tubes and hollow-sounding wood. Additionally, you’ll want to ensure that you eliminate any moisture, especially near the foundation of your home. Fix any leaks and regularly check that your drains are working properly and that your gutters are not clogged. 

If you begin to notice any signs of termite infestation, you’ll want to get a jump on controlling the issue as soon as possible. The first option you could go with is to place some bait stations around your home to kill the termites. These bait stations contain slow-acting poison that is carried back to their colonies, effectively eliminating larger groups of termites. You may also want to apply some liquid insecticides to the soil surrounding your home to create a barrier that will kill termites once they come into contact with it. 

However, many instances of termite infestation are much more complex than a simple home remedy will allow. If you’re experiencing issues with termites in your home, it may be best to enlist the help of a professional removal service. They will be able to provide a full inspection and get down to the root of the issues and completely eliminate them.

Earwigs

While these nocturnal insects aren’t as invasive as some others, they can be a nuisance when in your home, causing damage to plants and are just a sight for sore eyes. Earwigs tend to move inside in search of some sort of moisture when the weather dries up. With that in mind, if you can reduce any moisture areas, you won’t be providing them anywhere they’ll keep coming back to. Keep areas like basements and crawl spaces dry, and you’ll avoid seeing these little bugs crawl around.

To control earwigs once they are in your home, you can use something like diatomaceous earth to create a barrier around your home. This will dehydrate and kill any earwigs once they come in contact with the area. You could also opt for an earwig-specific insecticide. If you do use this option, you’ll want to closely follow the instructions listed on the label of the product in order to ensure safe and effective use. 

Ensuring your home is clean, secured, and organized will go a long way in keeping ants, mice, and mosquitoes away, allowing you to rest comfortably. With a combination of these prevention and control methods, you’ll efficiently and effectively eliminate those pesky and annoying pests inside and around your home. If you’re having severe issues and none of these methods work out, don’t hesitate to reach out to a pest professional to help take care of the issue. For now, you can put these methods to use to ensure that you enjoy a pest-free home and backyard!

You can check out our full selection of pest prevention products today online at FleetFarm.com or at your local store today.