20 Natural Ways to Keep Pests and Critters Out of Your House

The open availability of food, water, and shelter makes most homes an ideal place for rodents, insects, and other troublesome pests to infiltrate. If local wildlife and insects identify your home as a great place to live, you will need to take action right away to eradicate those pests and reclaim your house as your own. Otherwise, they will build their nests and raise their young within your walls, leaving you with a serious infestation in a very short period of time. Luckily, you can actively eliminate the pests from your home using natural products and techniques. Here are 20 natural ways to clear pests and critters out of your house and keep them from coming back.

Patch Holes with Steel Wool

Insects, rodents, and other small critters often make their way into your home through very small entry points along your crawlspace, basement, or attic. To keep the pests from moving freely in and out of your home, you will need to find these entry points and block them off. You can identify the holes that allow for pest entry by poking a pencil through suspected access points. As you find the holes in your home’s structure, stuff steel wool into the crevices to prevent insect and rodent reentry for the long term.

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Clear Away Food Debris

Keeping food debris off the countertops and ground can help eliminate the scents that attract rodents and insects, including cockroaches and ants, to your living space. You should clean your countertops at least once a day and sweep up food debris as it falls onto the floor. In addition, make sure to place all your inside and outside garbage into steel cans with tight-fitting lids. When household pests cannot find food within your home, they may look elsewhere for nourishment – And a secure place to live.

Eliminate All Standing Water

The presence of standing water in and around your home can attract insects and other pests in droves. Mosquitoes, in particular, love standing water since they use it to lay their eggs and raise their larvae to the adult stage. Check your basement, crawlspace, sink cabinets, appliances and yard for the presence of any puddles of water. Then, clear out the water you find and fix the leaks to eliminate this element that pests find so attractive.

Create Garlic Hot Pepper Spray

Garlic and hot peppers are two pungent substances that drive away pests of all kinds. You can make a spray using these key ingredients to kill pests on contact and prevent their return to the treated area. Make sure to mix equal parts hot pepper paste and garlic oil, and then fill the rest of the spray bottle with hot water. Allow the mixture to cool, and then spray liberally wherever you want to eliminate the problematic pests.

Sprinkle Cinnamon Along the Way

The strong scent of cinnamon helps deter wildlife and insects from frequenting areas treated with this substance. You can simply sprinkle fresh cinnamon powder along the perimeter of your home to cause ants, centipedes, spiders, and other pests to turn back the other way. For rodents and wildlife, apply cinnamon oil to a small piece of cloth and stuff it in the areas where you notice droppings or other signs of an infestation.

Apply Diatomaceous Earth Liberally

Although it comes from sedimentary rocks, diatomaceous earth acts as a powerful pest deterrent without impacting the health of people or pets in its direct vicinity. You can apply this powder around the interior and exterior walls of your home to dehydrate and kill insects. The sharp fragments cut into the exoskeleton of the insects and the powder removes their fluids, eventually killing them by dehydration. Since this substance works slowly, insects bring back the diatomaceous earth to their nests and kill their whole colonies with a single application.

Fill Your Garden with Fragrant Herbs

The freshest herbs, such as sage, rosemary, garlic, and mint, drive away pests with their amazing pungent odors and potentially irritating oils. You can enjoy easy harvests while keeping pests at bay by filling your garden with hearty herb plants. Plant these herbs in the garden beds around the foundation of your home to protect from termites, slugs, and other creatures that would otherwise live there and try to infiltrate the interior of your home.

Display a Potpourri Mix

If you simply do not have time to plant and tend to an herb garden, you can drive away ants, termites, and other critters by placing bowls of potpourri mix all throughout your house. Make sure to include fragrant herbs in your mix of flower petals to achieve the greatest pest control effect. You can replace the potpourri mix once a month to ensure the strong scent continues to deter pests well into the future.

Add Cedar Blocks to Your Drawers

The fresh scent of cedar, and its strong oils, keep moths and other flying pests from settling in your clothing drawers, linen closets, and other fabric-filled areas of your home. You can add small cedar blocks to your drawers and closets to keep these pests away and infuse your living space with the fresh scent of cedar. Make sure to place the cedar blocks away from your delicate fabrics, as the wood grains could snag or rip the fibers. Replace the cedar blocks whenever you notice their strong scent disappearing.

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Leave Citrus Peels in Spider Hangouts

Although spiders eat problematic bugs, many people find their presence in the home extremely undesirable. Luckily, spiders absolutely hate the presence of citrus in their vicinity. You can capitalize on this fact by placing citrus peels whenever you see spiders creating webs or crawling through your house. The citrus peels will not only eliminate the spiders from your home, but fleas, ticks, and aphids as well.

Bring in the Bats and Cats

Top predators make quick work of problematic pests and critters by reducing their numbers with every meal. Bats and cats can team up to completely eradicate rodents, insects, and other pests from your home and property. To attract bats to your home, hang up a wooden bat house at the edge of your property and wait for the results. The bats will eat mosquitos, flies, and other annoying insects all through the night. Cats are even easier to add to your home since you can simply adopt them from the nearest shelter. Although cats will hunt and eat bugs, their favorite pastime is hunting down rodents, squirrels, and other obnoxious critters.

Allow Beer to Do the Work

Beer has the phenomenal ability to eliminate slugs, snails, roaches, and other pesky creatures from your property in just a day or two. You can simply pop open a refreshing bottle of beer and place it in your yard to start the pest control process. By the next day, you will likely see many pests floating in the beer bottle where they were dispatched after drinking their fill. Once you have a bottle full of pests, throw it away and pop open another to continue eradicating troublesome critters.

Add Coffee Grounds to Your Soil

Adding spent coffee ground to the soil in your garden can help fertilize the plants and keep it pest-free for the long run. The caffeine in the coffee actually helps eliminate insects, especially when used in conjunction with other natural insecticides, such as garlic and hot peppers. The caffeine does not pose a risk to humans or pets, though it does tend to deter cats from digging and eliminating in your garden beds.

Set Up Borax and Sugar Traps

When ants identify your home as an ideal place to find food, they will utilize the smallest of entry holes to waltz into your living space. The lines of ants do not have to become a permanent part of your life, however. You can kill the ant colonies without stepping a foot outside by mixing up equal parts of borax and sugar, then making the mixture into a paste with a small amount of water. Add the borax sugar solution to small plastic lids to trick the ants into taking this powerful pest control agent back to their nests to eliminate their entire colony.

Treat with Eucalyptus Oil

Eucalyptus oil has a devastating effect on the health of adult cockroaches, which are otherwise unaffected by most other pest control solutions. You can apply this oil to a cotton ball and leave it in the areas where cockroaches scatter when you turn on the lights. Within a few days, you will notice far fewer cockroaches moving through your living space. You can reapply the oil-soaked cotton balls whenever you notice a marked decrease in their powerful scent.

Scatter Bay Leaves About

With or without pets in your household, fleas are a terrible pest to try to eradicate once it starts its life cycle in your home or yard. You can deter fleas from hitching a ride inside your home by scattering bay leaves through your living space. If you prefer, you can add bay leaves to your potpourri mix to ensure it helps eliminate fleas along with the other problematic pests in your area. You can also plant a sweet bay leaf tree in your yard to further deter fleas from coming anywhere near your property.

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Run a Sound Emitter

Rats, mice, squirrels, and other obnoxious critters absolutely abhor the high pitch squeal emitted by sound emitters designed for pest control. You can plug in these sound emitters inside and outside your home to keep critters running for cover far from your property. If you have dogs, cats, or other pets, however, the sound emitter may drive them batty as well. Look for ultrasonic pest repeller products made for pet-friendly households to keep your pets happy while eliminating unwanted critters.

Clean Up with White Vinegar

Many insects, such as ants and cockroaches, leave behind a pheromone trail that allows their nestmates to follow their lead to food and water. You can eliminate these trails and leave the pests guessing by cleaning up your living space with a strong white vinegar solution. Although vinegar smells sour at first, once the cleaning solution dries, its scent dissipates and leaves your home smelling fresh and clean.

Remove Japanese Barberry

Although Japanese Barberry plants look stunning and grow heartily nearly everywhere, their sheer presence causes tick infestations to grow rapidly in their vicinity. Even worse, the ticks living around this plant tend to carry the bacterium that causes lime disease in humans and animals. You can decrease the number of ticks in your yard and home by simply removing this invasive plant from your yard and burning its leaves, branches, and roots.

Utilize Oil Soap Spray

Oil soap solutions make insects and rodents avoid treated areas in a hurry. The feel of the oil and scent of the soap acts as a strong deterrent for these creatures. If you catch the infestation midway through its growth cycle, oil soap can also help eradicate pests and critters in a matter of days. To ensure the oil soap mixture you use is completely natural, make it at home using vegetable oil and bar soap. Shake the mixture in a spray bottle and spray liberally whenever you notice pests frequenting your home and yard.

With these 20 natural pest control methods on your side, you will surely have no problem keeping your home pest and critter-free for years to come. If you come across a particularly stubborn infestation or worry about the eradicated critters returning in the future, partner up with a skilled pest control expert for dedicated assistance. Your pest control professional will help you regain control of your home through the targeted removal of problematic pests and critters of all kinds.