Kids can be messy. Not your kids of course. I’m talking about other people’s kids. You know the ones. They make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right on the counter and leave a gob of jelly for you to find later–usually because you put your forearm or hand on it. They leave a wake of half-eaten bread, candy and Pop Tarts on every surface in the house and surprise you with sticky morsels on the kitchen table, or unidentifiable crumbs in the cushions of the couch. It is one of the many joys of child rearing.
This propensity for uncleanness can often happen in a blink of an eye. I remember making hot dogs one day. I called my son in to get his. He was five years old and used to putting his own ketchup on his hotdog, so I paid him no mind. But something went wrong during the process and he managed to get a rather substantial amount of it on his hand. Before I could even form the words, “Don’t move,” he moved. With a speed that left my mind unable to fully comprehend what had happened he smeared the ketchup down the front of his shirt in one thick streak and looked up at me with surprise. Apparently, the ‘ol, “Wipe it off on the shirt trick didn’t quite work as well as he had planned.”
What I did not know back then as a young parent is that all those sticky spills, all those dobs of sugary foods, and all of those crumbs were the reason we had so many pests. It doesn’t take much to feed a bug, and my house was full of a veritable buffet of choice dishes.
If you have not painstakingly sealed your exterior walls, maintained your screens, and had your perimeter treated by a professional pest control company, bugs and rodents will visit your home. But what many people don’t think about is that these pests are looking for a food source. If you have open trash, food on the counters, dirty dishes stacked by the sink, and crumbs in your rug, pests will be motivated to stay. Without even realizing it, your kids are feeding those pests.
I’m not telling you to chase after your kids and wipe up every little spill, because that’s just crazy talk. I’ve raised two little piggies and it is hard work. I get it. But there is a solution. It lies in what I mentioned above. If you partner with a pest control company they will do all the hard work of sealing bugs and rodents out and you won’t have to work so hard at keeping everything clean. I’m not going to lie. You’ll still need to do a couple of things to make sure your home stays pest free, but there are easy things like making sure you don’t leave the door open as you bring groceries from the car to the house, and remembering to put fruit in the refrigerator instead of on the table where fruit flies can develop. Your pest technician will walk you through it.
Those kids are going to make some messes, but that doesn’t mean you have to live with the cockroaches, ants, flies, beetles, mice, rats, and everything else that wants to creep around your house and spread illness. Get your yard and exterior walls protected and get bug free for 2015.
