Winter is over and spring is taking hold. While this means you’re likely to spend more time outdoors, it also means that pests are becoming newly active. Preventative measures are key to repelling pests from your Aiken property and making sure that your home is less attractive to animals looking for easy access to food and shelter.
Pests That Are Becoming Active Now
Changing seasons means animal activity is revving up for a new year, and all kinds of pests are coming out of the woodwork (sometimes literally!) in search of places to eat and sleep:
- Rodents: Mice, rats, gophers, and several other mammals are coming out of hibernation in the spring and can cause damage if left unchecked.
- Insects: Those that didn’t die off in the winter have hunkered down and populated, meaning new hordes are about to replace the ones you dealt with last year.
- Spiders: As bugs come back out in force, so do the animals that hunt them, like spiders.
Spring Cleaning Tips
Seasonal cleaning and maintenance are about more than just reducing clutter and keeping a tidy home—they are also imperative for pest prevention. Messes that accumulate during the winter tend to result in pest populations increasing. Here are some tips on areas and activities to keep in mind:
- Neglected spots: While countertops and tables where food is prepared or eaten are good areas to keep free of food traces, all manner of messes can make it under the fridge and oven. Moving appliances and getting at these messes is highly recommended.
- Yard debris: Don’t just focus on the interior of your home. Piles of yard debris, especially discarded or trimmed foliage like leaves and branches, make for easy hiding spots for pests.
- Waste storage: All the cleaning in the world won’t help you if your garbage or dumpster is left wide open for pests to pick through. Make sure you seal up trash bags and place them in containers with secure lids.
Other Tips For Pest Prevention
Other things don’t fall exclusively into the “cleaning” category that are good prevention measures:
- Exterior access: Pests can make it in through the smallest holes or cracks, so regularly examining the windows, screens, and exterior walls of your home, and sealing up or replacing problem materials along the way, will reduce points of entry.
- Moisture control: As hotter weather sets in, particularly in South Carolina, it also brings the humid weather that pests love so much. Reducing moisture and vapor buildup in your home, through proper ventilation and weather stripping, is incredibly important for keeping pests out.
- Regular inspections: All of this can be a lot of work for a responsible property owner to tackle all by themselves, so turning to professionals for regular inspections and maintenance is the surest way to make sure you’re staying on top of all this.
The Pros Help The Best
With so many things to be mindful of and to have to implement to keep your property safe, it’s easy to get behind on cleaning and maintenance. Luckily, you’ve got a helpful local resource for spring pest prevention: the pest pros at your local Aiken Pest Control office!
Our experts know all the places to check to make sure that pests aren’t a problem now or shortly. Routine inspection from professionals, as well as timely and effective pest removal, is the only way to have total peace of mind that your home is safe from pests.
Don’t tackle the myriad of spring prevention tasks all alone, call Aiken today.