How should you prepare your home for the arrival of pest control services?
- Clean and maintain your home.
- Rearrange your furniture and appliances.
- Tend to your outdoor space.
- Take note of all pest-related information.
- Make different living arrangements.
So you’ve found pests in your home and have already called pest control services – what do you do next? Do you leave your house as it is while waiting for the experts to arrive? Or do you have to prepare your house in a certain and specific way?
The answer is actually the latter. Most people aren’t aware of this but the initial preparations for pest control treatments are the responsibility of the homeowner. These steps meant to prepare your residence isn’t only to benefit the experts and make their jobs easier, it is also to make the treatment as effective as possible – meaning both parties gain something through the process.
Once you’ve scheduled your appointment with a trusted pest control service, they’ll instruct you to do certain tasks prior to their first visit and in between the remaining ones. Some of these tasks can get a little overwhelming and they may also require a lot of time. Most get taken aback by these but you can easily avoid that by knowing what they are beforehand.
We’ve written the most basic preparations that pest control services request their clients to do, so keep on scrolling and find out what they are.
Clean and Maintain Your Home
All pest control services ask their clients to do a thorough cleaning of their home in order to get the best possible results from the treatment. When we speak of cleaning and maintaining, we don’t only mean sweeping the floors and clearing your kitchen sink. Included in this step is the repair of broken and leaky pipes, proper disposal of unused and pest-infested items, washing your beddings, and vacuuming every corner of your home.
In short, you have to do a thorough general cleaning to remove all the unnecessary items in your home and keep it spic and span well until after the treatment is over and beyond. Doing so ensures that the pests stay away from your home and that you don’t have to ever call pest control ever again.
Rearrange Your Furniture and Appliances
Aside from keeping your house pristine and divinely, some experts may also request that you move your appliances and furniture around. In some cases, you will have to move them a few inches away from the wall. Some will ask for you to completely remove mattresses, articles of clothing, and other such things from your home – especially those that are breakable and easily knocked over. Or at the very least, they will ask you to cover them.
What you do with your furniture depends on the treatment needed to get rid of the pests so the experts will usually tell you what to do with them. There are even times when you can leave them as is, but more often than not you’ll be required to move them or cover them to prevent the chemicals from seeping into the furniture.
Tend to Your Outdoor Space
Those who know how to prep their home for pest control treatment often forget that their outdoor space needs to be tended, too. The very few who do this, however, go about it the wrong way, so we’re going to teach you the correct ways now.
For one, mow your lawns and tend to your gardens a day prior to the appointment. It is also important to keep them watered, but do it a few days before and not on the day of the appointment itself. The same goes for your sidewalks – you have to sweep and hose them down on a different day.
Take Note of All Pest-Related Information
Experts aren’t magical pest detectors that are instantly made aware of the type and location of pests in your home the moment they walk in. You must aid them by sharing all the knowledge and information you have gathered regarding the pests residing in your home.
Every piece is crucial and will help them figure out how to effectively fix the problem. No matter how small you may think it is, everything is valuable to the exterminators. Simply telling them what evidence you saw and where allows them to correctly identify the cause and extent of the infestation.
Make Different Living Arrangements
There are instances when the pest infestation is way too severe that they have to fumigate your home or drill through the floors and walls. The fumes, chemicals, and dust resulting from these methods are extremely harmful to the human body, so you should make separate living arrangements for the duration of the treatment.
Your pest control services should tell you just how long you need to stay away from your home and all you need to do is heed their advice. They may ask you to go somewhere else for a day or two or maybe even a week – all depending on the severity of the infestation.
Key Takeaway
Pest control services won’t do everything for you. The only job they have is to identify the problem and make it go away. Anything else needed is the responsibility of the homeowner. This includes keeping the house clean prior the treatment and even after it, rearranging and/or covering the furniture, noting information regarding the information, and making separate living arrangements in case an evacuation is needed.
These are nothing but the most common tasks, though, and your pest control expert may require you to do a few more tasks. When that time comes, make sure to follow through in order to guarantee a successful pest extermination!