No one wants to see pests in their home, and if you’ve seen them once you are sure to see more. By the time pests make themselves visible, it means that infestation has already reached a fairly advanced level. Most common household pests, like cockroaches and rodents, make great efforts to remain in places that are outside of your view. They’ll come out at night to search for food, but by the time you wake up they’ll already be deep within hiding.

So, how do you get pests out of your home when they are so good at remaining hidden? There are many articles on DIY approaches to removing infestation, but there’s bad news: DIY treatments rarely prove effective. The most effective DIY strategy is prevention, but by the time pests are present in your home it is too late for this.

Prevention Step One: Sealing

If you’ve yet to see pests in your home, you should start taking preventive measures today. There are many steps you can take to prevent pests from becoming an issue in your home, but no are more important than sealing and cleaning. Sealing is especially important, because pests cannot find their way into a properly sealed home, no matter how desperate they are to get inside. The only pests that can’t be prevented with sealing are the ones that we accidentally carry into our homes, such as bed bugs and occasionally cockroaches.

Sealing your home includes eliminating any potential entrances that pests may use to get into your home. This including sealing cracks along the foundation, unsecured gaps in attic or basement ventilation, making sure windows and doors close securely, and regularly replacing weather stripping throughout your home. If you aren’t confident in your ability to seal your home, you should get in touch with a professional sealer.

Prevention Step Two: Cleaning

If your home isn’t tidy, pests have even more reason to find their way in. Many regular cleaning tasks help prevent pests, and just a few extra minutes of cleaning each day can make a big difference in preventing an infestation from taking place. Small steps, like washing dishes as soon as you use them and taking trash out daily, could save you thousands of dollars on extermination and repairing the damage and diseases that are associated with pests in the home.

Here are a few cleaning tasks that you shouldn’t forget:

• Regular sweeping, mopping and vacuuming

• Cleaning behind appliances

• Never leaving food out, storing it only in your refrigerator or air-tight containers

• Taking trash to outside bins every night

• Remove any sources of unneeded moisture as soon as you spot it

Professional Pest Control Is Essential

If you’ve seen pests in your home, you should get in touch with an experienced pest control provider right away. These pests reproduce at rapid rates, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a DIY treatment that will successfully eliminate them. Not only do pest control experts know all there is to know about these tiny invaders, they also have access to the tools and sprays that are required to put an end to pests.

The longer you wait to give a pest control professional a call, the more time pests have to reproduce and spread bacteria around your home. Plus, the more pests are present in your home the harder they will be to remove, even for the most seasoned experts. If you have an advanced infestation in your home, you may need multiple treatments in order to eliminate it. The best way to prevent this problem is to follow all of the recommended prevention steps and get in touch with an exterminator as soon as you suspect that pests may be present within your home.