A Ticking Time Bomb: 5 Steps for Removing Ticks From Your Life
If you live in a tick-prone area like we do here in New Hampshire, preventing these pesky blood-sucking bugs from invading your home may be more important than you realize. Not only are these pesky bugs an annoyance to remove, but they also pose a severe health risk to pets and people alike. Ticks can carry various harmful diseases and viral infections, such as Lyme disease, that can affect humans and pets and cause irreparable damage.
The good news is that evicting ticks from your home is easier than it may appear. Here are a few ideas to help you keep your home tick-free.
Use pesticides that are pet and people-friendly
Always use caution with pesticides around children and pets, but luckily many tick pesticides you can use at home are safe for both. Wondercide is one brand that you can get on Amazon for home use and is safe for both kids and pets.
To keep curious young children safe from the clutches of contaminations when playing outside, treat all outdoor play clothes and sneakers with permethrin. Additionally, you can also treat door frames, carpets, pet areas, and near heating vents. If you don’t want to put in the sweat and muscle required to spray your entire house, opt for professional pest control services such as this.
Maintain your yard
The last thing you want to do is play hide and seek with a bunch of ticks. These pests love to hide in warm, shady areas like sheds, swingsets, and doghouses or overgrown shrubbery and grassy areas. Regularly manicuring your yard is a superb way of preventing ticks from hitching a ride on your clothes or your pet’s fur. Trim back plants that are becoming too bushy or unruly, and be sure to quickly bag up any autumn leaf piles instead of letting them sit stagnantly. Leaf piles in the spring are a HUGE breeding ground for ticks and going anywhere near them can result in several dozen ticks on your clothing.
Tidy inside
Having a consistent indoor cleaning routine is just as important as your outdoor maintenance, as it will ensure that you catch any hideaway ticks. Consistently vacuum high-traffic areas in your home, wash carpets and pet beds, and pay extra attention to warm, small spaces.
If the thought of ticks in your home isn’t nightmarish enough, they can also climb just as well as spiders, so take a second look at ceiling corners and molding. If you happen to stumble upon a tick, don’t rely on squashing it as an extermination method. Instead, use a paper towel to pick it up and flush it down the toilet to be sure it’s gone for good.
Repel them with essential oils
You can use essential oils to help repel ticks inside your home if you don’t like the idea of harsh chemicals. Ticks absolutely hate the smell of lemon, orange, cinnamon, lavender, peppermint, and rose geranium so using these essential oils on clean laundry, carpets, furniture and more will make them steer clean of anything that smells of those oils.
Invest in tick collars for pets
Pets that spend time indoors and outdoors, especially adventurous dogs, are the main reason ticks make it inside homes. Running through tall grass, stopping to sniff the brush, and general frolicking through the wilderness is bound to pick up ticks every once in a while.
Carefully removing these blood-sucking pests is an unpleasant experience for everyone involved, which is why prevention is the best course of action. By treating your furry friends with tick collars or insect repellent bandanas, you can stop ticks from attaching to their skin in the first place. If you get a topical tick repellent, it can stop ticks in their tracks for up to three months, keeping them healthy and your house clean of those little pests.
Wash with hot water
Use the hottest water possible when washing your rugs or any clothes you’ve worn in wild areas. Ticks may have jumped at the chance to hitchhike into your home on your clothes, where they’re more than happy to lay and wait for the perfect time to bite. Washing these potential pest spots in hot, soapy water will kill off any remaining ticks that found their way inside.
Prevention is key
Physically removing ticks is a time-consuming pain, and getting rid of an infestation can seem even more challenging. Luckily, by keeping your home and lawn tidy, as well as investing in pest control for your home and animals, you can keep ticks at bay. By preventing and removing ticks from your home and your life, you’re safeguarding the health of yourself and your loved ones.
If you think you or someone you know may have been bitten by a tick, you should get tested for Lymes Disease. You can get at-home Lymes disease tests from LetsGetChecked and test yourself or someone in your household without visiting a doctor. Use coupon code FHW to get 20% off your order.
