How To Keep Your Holiday Pest-Free

The holidays are for gathering with family and friends, opening gifts, eating delicious food, and listening to festive music. However, holiday gatherings can also encourage pest problems, such as mice, spiders, and cockroaches. If you’re curious about how the holidays can invite pests, stick with us. We’ll look at everyday things we do this time of year and how they could lead to an indoor pest problem.

Decorations

Do you bring a Christmas tree into your home or decorate your exterior doors with wreaths? If so, there are a few things you should know.

• Pests can hitch rides into your home on live decorations.
• Spiders can deposit egg sacs on Christmas trees, and those eggs can hatch inside your home, resulting in an infestation of spiderlings.
• Pests may also hide in fake trees and wreaths that are stored improperly.

Tips:

• Shake your Christmas tree and other live decorations before bringing them indoors.
• Check your Christmas tree and other live decorations for paper-like egg sacs or the presence of pests. Wash pests away with water.
• Take decorations out of storage boxes to check them before bringing them indoors.
• After the holidays, store your decorations in sealed plastic containers to keep pests out.

Baking

Every holiday gathering is better with cookies, cakes, pies, and other treats. But there are a few issues that can arise when managing baked goods:

• Pests may travel into your home in bags of sugar, flour, and other baking ingredients. Pantry pests lay their eggs in food sources.
• Pests may enter your home from outside when food is detected indoors. A good example is when a scout ant finds some crumbs in your kitchen and leaves a trail for workers to follow to your food storage area.
• Smells from baked goods can attract pests, not just the scent of food cooking but also the smell of slightly decaying foods in your pantry.

Tips:

• Check the expiration dates on packaging at the grocery store.
• Check for damaged packaging.
• Consider using sealed containers to store your baked goods ingredients, such as sugar and flour.
• When transferring ingredients to your containers, look for webbing, insects, or grubs.
• Keep your cabinets and shelves free of powders, crumbs, honey, etc.
• If you don’t use sealed containers, write the expiration dates on your packages with a black marker before storing them in your pantry or cabinets. This will allow you to easily check expirations.

Food waste

It is easy to cook too much food for a gathering. While much of that food will get eaten in subsequent days, food waste is likely. You may also have some waste on the day you cook. In either case, there are a few things you should know about throwing food away:

• Decaying food has a strong odor that can lure pests such as mice, rats, and flies into your home.
• Decaying food in exterior trash receptacles can lure pests onto your property and near exterior entry points in your home. Flying pests can zip right in through an open door.
• Compost is a food source for pests. Flies, cockroaches, and other filth pests eat decaying organic matter.

Tips:

• Keep kitchen food in covered containers and remove trash from your home before food can decay in your trash and create a scent.
• Keep your interior and exterior receptacles covered.
• Get your trash to the curb each week.
• Keep trash receptacles away from your exterior doors.
• Mix compost properly to avoid strong odors and keep compost away from your exterior.

Bed bugs

Do you travel during the holidays? If so, you may pick up bed bugs along the way. These are indoor pests that hitchhike from one location to another. Here are a few facts you should know:

• You can get bed bugs when you stay overnight on your way to family or friends.
• You can get bed bugs in the home of family or friends. An infestation isn’t always apparent at first.
• Bed bugs leave signs of their presence, such as black feces, red or brown stains, shed skins, and tiny white eggs.

Tips:

• When spending the night away from home, always check your accommodation for bed bugs, paying careful attention to the mattress, box spring, and nearby furniture.
• Store your laundry in a sealed bag. A trash bag sealed with a bread-tie is more than enough.
• Consider protecting your luggage by storing your luggage in sealed plastic bags.
• Use the luggage rack provided in your hotel or motel.

If these annoying pests find their way home with you during the holidays, don’t worry. Evergreen Pest Solutions offers expert bed bug control. We can help you deal with them quickly and discreetly.

Holiday pest protection

Many pests that can cause trouble in your home are insects and rodents already living in your yard. How do you keep them out? If you live in Richmond, Charlottesville, Roanoke, or surrounding areas, Evergreen Pest Solutions’ home pest control service is the ideal solution. 

Our Premium Seasonal Pest Control plan provides year-round protection against pests like ants, spiders, rodents, and more, with treatments tailored to each home. Services include thorough inspections, exterior and interior treatments, and free follow-ups for covered pests between visits. Evergreen ensures a pest-free home with quarterly maintenance and responsive customer care. Learn more or request a free quote at Evergreen Pest Solutions.

Don’t let insects and rodents dampen your holiday spirit; contact Evergreen Pest Solutions today!