Pests will always do their best to infiltrate your home if the conditions are right. Dorms and apartments present some limitations on what you can do because you’re a tenant.
Read below for ways to defend your apartment or dorm against pests.
Tip #1: Clean Up After Eating
Ants, roaches and rodents seek places where food is easily accessible and readily available. You cannot control how well your neighbors clean, but you can control what you do. So, keep your home as clean as you can. Go beyond merely washing dishes and storing food in sealed containers. Vacuum all the crumbs and thoroughly clean your garbage can and recycling bins to remove food residue.
Tip #2: Clean Up After Your Pets
Keep your pets’ food area clean and store their food supply in sealed containers. Vacuum and/or mop areas where they snack so there are no food particles or residue left behind.
Tip #3: Fortify Your Home
You cannot control how well your neighbors keep their homes secure or what pests they might attract with their lifestyles. However, don’t ignore how you can prevent pests from entering your home. Make sure your doors and windows close properly and call management if they do not. Patch up any holes in screens on screen doors and windows.
-
Doors
Weatherstrip the bottoms and sides of doors that lead outside to prevent pests from entering your home. Use adhesives that can be removed without damaging the door or the paint on the door. Weatherstrip the bottoms and sides of screen doors also. Think of these redundancies as fail-safes.
-
Windows
Apply wire mesh patches over any drainage holes in window frames where bugs might crawl through. Leave these holes open to serve their purpose; pools of rainwater seep into the wood and cause it to rot.
-
Vents
Talk with your building manager about what you can and cannot do about adding wire mesh over vents going into your home. Some building managers may even give you the wire mesh needed to do the job.
You will need two types of wire mesh to keep out the vast majority of pests. Heavier wire mesh keeps rodents out, while finer wire mesh will keep insects like roaches from your home.
Get Help Keeping Pests Out of Your Apartment or Dorm
Talk to your building manager about pest control. Take pictures of pests around the complex so exterminators can quickly identify and eradicate them.
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, pests manage to infest homes. Contact the professionals at Germantown Pest Control, and we will gladly help with your problems.