#WinterIsComing: Make Your Home Pest-Free!

With the starting of the festival season, which also apprehends the beginning of winters, many people must be planning their swachh ghar abhiyaan (home cleaning mission). To ensure that your home is completely clean, one of the important things you should pay attention to, is pests that invade homes in winters.

To help you go through the process, PropGuide lists common winter pests you should beware of and ways you can keep them away from your home:

Rats: These rodents generally hover throughout the year and are tough to catch. Known to spread fatal diseases, rats will rip everything that they can, including clothes, food packets, and even furniture. Ensure you keep all the food condiments in air-tight containers and in enclosed shelves. Safeguard any unwanted openings to your home, such as open windows and space between door and frame by blocking or closing them using sealants, sealing clay or rubber stoppers. You can also use the traditional metal traps, and rat kill feed.

Ants: Ants can make way into your home through tiniest of cracks. They seek for a warm environment to live in during the winters. Make sure that there are no food condiments lying in the open and all packs, which need to be disposed, are sealed and disposed properly.

Termites: Also known as white ants, termites feed on wooden furniture. These are frequent in winters as they find right humid conditions in home furniture such as cupboards. Give your home a complete termite treatment right before the winters set in. Use naphthalene balls to ensure no humid conditions are created in cupboards. Don't keep these balls in cupboards used to store food.

Cockroaches: Cockroaches dwell in moist areas and make home in unreachable corners of your home. Make sure these corners are cleaned regularly. The sinks of the kitchen as well as the washroom should also be kept dry when not in use.

Spiders: These are found in the corners of your home. Ensure that you clean extreme corners of your homes, especially the ceilings.

Flies: These are the most frequent invaders and breed at a considerable rate for which seek indoors to carry on with their life cycle. These are the common contaminators of eatables causing infections and other diseases. Ensure you get a pest control in your home to keep these away.

To sum up, keep a stock of naphthalene balls, room fresheners, and repellent sprays. Get pest control in your home right before the change in season. And, follow a good sanitation regime.