Construction Industry Articles
The kitchen is the heart of any home. The kitchen is where you prepare your meals, nourish your body, relish flavors, and is a place you always want to keep clean. Despite your best efforts at play, resilient little critters won't pass on the chance to invade your sacred space.
Where there's a crack or crevice, there's a way, and you can bet these unwanted visitors are here to stay unless you prepare yourself. As the old saying goes, "prevention is better than cure". Here are ways to prevent a house invasion from pests and insects.
To effectively keep pests out, you'll have to seal and fill in any cracks or small spaces which can serve as an entryway into your home.
It is important to dust and sweep outside as well. Dust can clump up and create a plug for cracks small enough for you to ignore but just suitable for insects and bugs to dig their way through.
Between wooden slabs is a common place for pests to nest, even outdoors. So, having the proper decking material could save you so much hassle from the get-go.
Speaking of wooden materials, if pests do manage to scurry their way into your home, the wooden kitchen cabinets are the most favorable part of the house they will target first. The cabinets can provide food, shelter and moisture, creating the perfect place the new visitors to call home.
They are made of wood, which expands and contracts during different seasons. This can create space for little bugs like ants, cockroaches, and even termites to nest by providing shelter. Wooden cabinets can also be a place to store food that they can easily access if it is not covered correctly.
Any place that can provide shelter, easy access to food, and is dark or damp makes for the best places for pests to gather.
If you have a garden, keep most plants away from the house or, more specifically, from the kitchen. Make sure the soil outside hasn't retained excess moisture. On the flip side, you would want to keep fresh basil and bay leaves around the kitchen.
The fresh basil helps ward off fruit flies, and bay leaves are a strong repellent against ants, fleas, cockroaches, moths, wood pests and silverfish that might be hiding in your kitchen cabinets. All you have to do is place some basil plants on your kitchen window, and as for the bay leaves, place some in the corner of your cabinets with some cinnamon sticks.
Clean your countertops and cabinets by wiping them down and scrubbing around every corner. Check the hinges and handles for any food particles that might have gotten stuck there. Cleaning with essential citrus oil can also help prevent pests from invading.
Insects can detect food that's been laid out for longer than recommended, so it's essential to clean up any spills and crumbs right away to avoid attracting them. Keeping food stored away and actively looking for any food particles you might have missed will save you a lot of long-term headaches.
As mentioned earlier, it's important to seal cracks and crevices outside and inside the home. Even leaving cabinets slightly open becomes a passageway for pests to enter into. You want to ensure that insects have no way of entering your home.
Likewise, any food that will be left out in the open should be sealed in airtight containers. Freshly bought food boxes should not have any damage or holes on them. In addition, any sign of rotting in produce should be immediately disposed of.
It's good practice to ensure your garbage is taken out on time and soon as possible. Trash containing any food traces is sure to attract the unwanted visitors you're trying to avoid. Don't forget to run your garbage disposal regularly.
A female fruit fly can lay around 500 eggs on the surface of fermenting fruit, so throwing it out in the outdoor garbage can prevent the fruit fly eggs from hatching in the indoor trash cans and getting into wood cabinets.
The kitchen is one of the essential rooms in your home as it contains the food you use to prepare meals. The food is specifically stored inside kitchen cabinets which can be prone to insects getting inside them as they are made of wood. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep these pests out. There are various ways that you can do this. For starters, it helps to seal crevices leading outside and ensure that the cabinet door is closed. Often, a problem is causing insects inside your house and cabinets, and it helps to figure it out. It also helps to keep plants away while putting specific ones inside that can repel them. It would help if you also kept everything in your house and kitchen clean while throwing out the trash.
Abdullah Riaz is a writer, who alongside content writing, also takes part in fiction writing. He has already been published in a book as one of the winners of a fiction writing contest. In addition to writing, he also has experience with all sorts of research, particularly in IT-related fields. He has always been a fan of writing and learning about new topics. Outside writing, you'll find him spending time with his dog, Terry.
