Insect Free Home - Part II

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Insects that damage your textiles and costumes, Insects that damage books and paper, Insects that damage furniture and timber and household ants are constant worries to the sole owners of these personal possessions. This article discusses the easy methods to get rid of the various categories of the insects at your home.

Insects that damage your textiles and costumes include moths and carpet beetle.

There are around 30 species of carpet beetle. They feed on dry and animal matters such as furs, skins, natural fibers, and dry natural insect specimens. You can try the following natural methods to control the carpet beetle.

As a first step to control the carpet beetle, you must find out the sources of carpet beetle infestations. Although carpet beetle damages the fabric in the house, they can also be at bird's nests and dust infected areas. Once you find the sources of these insects' infestations, you can start destructing them from the origin itself.

The heartwood of red cedar that is less than 36 months has a vapor that is toxic to the carpet beetle larvae. Bags containing cedar chips can be placed around to control carpet beetle larvae.

Adult carpet beetle can be captured on sticky flypaper enticed with animal products and can be killed away with hot water.

Plastic bags and tight containers of the garments will prevent the carpet beetle from laying eggs on them. Even if the bag gets infested with the insects, the infestation will be on few items only.

The exposure of the insects infested items to -20o F for three days or 105o F for four hours will kill the carpet beetle on them. The larvae of carpet beetle will move out of the infested textiles if they are exposed to the sun.

A number of moth species attack the textiles at home. Clothes moths will eat a wide range of woolen, hair, fur, silk, felt and feathers. The undetected and serious infestation of clothes moths in a home will cause significant damage to clothing, bedding, floor coverings and other articles. Here are some effective and natural steps to control clothes moths.

A good sanitation and clean up of all the rotten fruits, vegetables and leaves are necessary to control moths.

A garlic spray will be most effective against a clothes moth.

The microorganisms like fungi, bacteria and viruses will biologically control the clothes moths if they are used deliberately to control these insects.

The freshly cut cedar woods will give effective protection against the clothes moths. Aromatic oils found in the cedar heartwood will kill the moth larvaes to a large extent.

Dry cleaning of the textiles will kill the moths to a large extent. However it will not prevent the reinfestation of the clothes moths. Nevertheless you can store the dry-cleaned clothes in a tight container or a cold storage to prevent reinfestation.

The exposure of the moth infested items to -20o F for seven days or 122o F for 11-14 minutes will kill the moths on them.

Insects that damage books and paper are none other than bookworms, also called as silverfish or fish moths. They will mainly eat paper, glue of bindings, starched clothing and dry foods.

Fish moth bait will prevent and kill the bookworms at least for one year. You have to soak five parts of gum Arabic in water overnight. Then make a paste out of the soaked gum Arabic, 5 parts sodium fluosilicate, 4 parts flour, 6 parts sugar and enough water. Later dip strips of card into the paste and hang it dry. Place these cards in affected areas and change them yearly.

Bookworms can also be eradicated by using hair dryer on a hot setting.

Ventilating and drying the bookworm-infested areas will drive these insects.

Insects that damage furniture and timber are furniture beetles or wood worms. They will eat the wood, coverings and build up their own nests on the furniture. Following are the effective steps to control wood worms.

Extreme heat is anathema for wood worms. There for you can professionally fume or heat the wood worm infected furniture for 24 hours. This fuming will kill woodworms, their larvae and eggs.

Woodworms like moisture. You can sprinkle talcum powder around any infestation to get rid of these wood insects.

Two of the most common house ants are red ants and black ants. They will attack the food items in-group and contaminate them. Even though their sting is not poisonous, it can be very painful. Moreover ants in your bed sheets and clothes can disturb your peace of mind for hours. On top of this ants would like to nest in warm places like video recorders and burglar alarms to cause electrical short circuits. Here are the most easy and simple steps to get rid of the house ants.

First of all locate the ants nest or from where they are entering the house. Interestingly ants do not cross a chalk line. Therefore you can draw a chalk around the ants marching areas.

You have to clean food after each meal, remove small pools of water, rotten fruits or vegetables, and use effective trash disposal methods to eliminate the factors for the ant's survival.

You can sprinkle powdered red chili pepper, paprika, dried peppermint or borax on ant trails, in cracks and near entryways to deter these sugary favorite insects.

You have to get rid your garden of aphids, whiteflies and mealybugs. These sap-feeding insects excrete "honeydew," most favorable for the ants.

You can create a liquid bait by mixing 1 tea spoon. boric acid with 2 1/2 tea spoon honey. Heat until the boric acid dissolves. In an eyedropper, add equal amounts of water and solution to drop in ant infested areas for 2 weeks.

You can pour a natural repellent of citrus peelings and water in a blender over the anthill.

The most easy and effective method to get rid of the house ants is to pour boiled water over the ant hills.

Now, the easy steps to get rid of insects that spoil your possessions have been discussed at length. You can have an insect free home all to yourself.But wait! there are some other dangerous insects in your home that will affect your health.

The natural ways to get rid of those insects will be discussed in detail in the next article.