What Not To Do When You Have Fleas

Whether you have pets or not, you will probably experience a flea infestation in your home at some point.  You have probably tried a lot of things to get rid of them and maybe some of them worked for awhile and maybe some of them made things worse.  Let's take a moment to talk about things you should NOT do when encountering fleas in your home.

1)  Don't Set Off Flea Bombs
Probably the most counterproductive thing that you can do is start setting off flea bombs.  Unfortunately, this is the first thing that many people try in their do-it-yourself exterminating.  It seems like it should work, right?  You fog the whole house and get every nook and cranny, killing every flea in the process.  Only, it doesn't actually work.  A flea bomb is just a repellent with almost zero residual.  This makes it the equivalent of spraying mosquito repellent on your body while in the woods.  It doesn't actually kill the fleas, but just pushes them deeper into your furniture, baseboards, etc.  This can give the appearance that it "worked for awhile", but don't fool yourself.  It doesn't work!

2)  Don't Go Cheap On Flea Medication For Your Pets
When it comes to flea medication for your dogs and cats, you really get what you pay for.  You can run over to the dollar store and get flea medication, but don't expect it to kill any fleas.  Instead, spend the extra bucks and get some Frontline or Advantage flea medicine.  It will work great and will stop the pets from continuing to bring in more and more fleas.

3)  Don't Forget To Check The Crawl Space
It seems like a weird thing to suggest when you are dealing with fleas, but in realty the fleas may not be coming from your pets at all.  You could have other animals living under your home that are causing the problem.  For example, raccoons are absolutely loaded with fleas and home owners may not even realize that they have one under their house!  Also, rodents carry fleas as well.  If you don't take care of the source of your flea problem, you will have little success in controlling them.

Things That Are Worth Trying
If you are really stuck on doing the do-it-yourself route, you can try a few things.  If you want to get a product, your best bet is to try some of the powders that you put on your carpet.  They are not super effective, but are better than any other alternatives available to you.  You can also try vacuuming as often as you can stand.  Vacuuming will pick up flea eggs around the house and allow you to dispose of them outside before they hatch.  Lastly, throwing your linens in the dryer on high heat for about 30 minutes can be effective in killing a lot of fleas.  Go ahead and give these things a shot and if they aren't working for you, be sure to give us a call and we can help you.