It’s tough being a parent, to say the least. You want what’s best for your children, and when it comes to pest control, options seem pretty limited! Are there any safe pest control solutions out there? At Pest Pointers, we’ve got it all figured out!
Pest Pointers is a champion for those looking for safe pest control solutions that can be used around children and pets. We search high and low for the best products and solutions to control various pests in and around the home, all without resorting to harsh, toxic chemicals.
The next time you find a pest in your home, yard, or garden, head to Pest Pointers for all your safe pest control needs. We’re here to help you achieve a pest-free environment while keeping your family happy and healthy.
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How Pest Pointers Can Help: Child Safety
If you’re concerned about the impact of traditional pest control methods on your children, then you’ve come to the right place! Pest Pointers is dedicated to finding families the best eco-friendly, humane pest control solutions.
This means:
Non-toxic
Safe for the environment
Safe for children
Safe for pets
So, if you want to create a safe and healthy home environment for your children by adopting sustainable pest management practices, Pest Pointers can help! Read on to discover how we approach safe pest control.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Integrated Pest management is a broad umbrella word that covers a variety of ways to handle pests naturally. It involves changing your home or yard’s environment so that it is less desirable to the pest.
For example, keeping the grass trimmed short eliminates hiding places for snakes, mice, chipmunks, and voles, making your yard less attractive to them.
IPM is all about removing attractants and making the space less desirable. It can also include providing better habitat for natural predators, such as installing owl nesting boxes to take care of rodent problems.
Barriers and Fencing
Creating a physical barrier between the pest and its prize (whether that be your home, garden, shed, etc.) is a fantastic way to solve pest problems naturally. Barriers may include netting, wooden fencing, metal sheeting, or a combination of these to physically seal up entry points.
Barriers work great at keeping pests out of specific places, but it’s not a one-and-done fix to solve all pest problems. Even if you block a mouse hole, if the mouse is still attracted to the crumbs in the kitchen or the undisturbed attic space, they’ll keep coming back and making new holes.
For this reason, it’s imperative to combine safe pest control methods together for the ultimate protection of your home and property, as well as your family.
Habitat Modification
Habitat modification works hand-in-hand with IPM. It involves changing your yard to make it less desirable to the pest. This means picking up unused tools, stacking firewood off the ground, removing dirt and wood piles, and keeping your yard neat and tidy.
By doing so, you remove hiding places and potential homes for pests like snakes, squirrels, mice, rabbits, voles, chipmunks, raccoons, and skunks. Removing weeds helps eliminate homes for smaller insect pests.
If you have fruit or nut trees, try removing them as soon as they fall to avoid providing food for potential pests like deer, squirrels, and mice.
Habitat modification takes a little work, but it goes a long way in preventing pesky critters from calling your yard home. The best part? No harsh chemicals needed! It’s one of many safe pest control solutions that we recommend in our articles.
Scare Tactics
Scare tactics appeal to a pest’s sense of fear and survival. These can range from motion lights to noise makers.
In its most basic form, you want to place something unusual in the environment that the pest is not used to. When the pest encounters the ‘scary’ object or experience, their survival instincts kick in and tell them to get away because it’s something that may harm them.
A great example of a scare tactic are motion lights. Many nighttime critters do their damage at night when we’re not looking. They rely on the cover of darkness to avoid predators. By installing motion lights in front of your home or garden, you’re using a scare tactic to keep away raccoons, coyotes, skunks, opossums, and other roamers of the night.
Similarly, noise can be a fantastic deterrent for pests! Something as simple as a tin can filled with marbles or hanging up pie crust pans that’ll make noise in the wind can scare away deer and even bears. Again, these tactics require no toxic ingredients or chemicals, so they are safe for your children (and pets!).
Scent Deterrents
Scent deterrents are a safe pest control solution for various invading critters in and around the home. This type of deterrent works by overwhelming the pest’s sense of smell, making it difficult for them to locate food or detect danger.
Common examples of scent deterrents include strong herbs like peppermint, oregano, and black pepper. These can come in the form of essential oils, spices, candles, and sprays.
At Pest Pointers, we love recommended scent deterrents because they are effective deterrents that don’t rely on harsh chemicals, toxic substances, or inhumane practices.
Eco-Friendly Pest Control Sprays and Substances
Sprays like neem oil and those crafted from essential oils are good for the environment and safe for pets and children. Eco-friendly pest control sprays work in a variety of different ways. Some, like neem oil, require the pest to consume the spray, so it’s best applied for insects that are eating your plants.
Other sprays, like essential oils, work by repelling the pest using strong-smelling oils in a diluted spray solution.
Eco-friendly substances like diatomaceous earth are another great option for repelling insect pests. It works by utilizing a sharp texture that, when insects crawl over it, cuts their carapace and dries them out. While this substance is sharp to insects, larger creatures like people, children, and pets, are unaffected.
Biological Control
One of the final ways that Pest Pointers promotes safe pest control for your children is by recommending biological control. This involves utilizing the natural predator-prey relationship between the problem pest and their predator.
For example, if you’re having problems with snakes or mice, try installing owl boxes around the yard or keeping the grass and bushes trimmed to make it easier for hawks and owls to spot these critters.
Similarly, beneficial insects like ladybugs can be released in gardens to take care of pests like aphids. Or, you can read about how to attract ladybugs to your garden naturally to take care of insect pests.
Biological pest control requires no toxic chemicals and simply relies on the natural predator-prey relationship.
The 5 Steps To Safe Pest Control For Families With Children
At Pest Pointers, we understand the concerns of homeowners with little ones running around the home and yard. Kids tend to get into things they shouldn’t, and aren’t the best at hygiene yet, so it’s important to choose safe pest control that doesn’t pose a threat to kids or pets.
Sounds daunting, right? Don’t worry, safe pest control is easier than you think! Our well-researched articles dive deep into how to control and prevent pests using common household products, simple barriers, and habitat modification.
Step 1: Assess Your Pest Problem
The first step in your safe pest control expedition is to assess your pest problem and identify if it’s something that requires your attention (and our expertise!).
Seeing one skunk in your yard doesn’t necessarily mean you have a skunk problem. However, if you’re seeing a skunk family day after day in your yard, it may indicate they’re living near your home and require pest control action.
That said, it’s important to also understand the threshold for pests. In other words, when is seeing just one creature considered a pest problem? For example, almost everyone would understandably consider one mouse in the house a pest problem, or one wasp nest in the yard a problem.
So, assess your specific pest problem and identify if it requires safe pest control solutions, or maybe just needs some time to work itself out, such as a lone skunk or coyote passing through your yard. When in doubt, consider it a pest!
Step 2: Identify Your Pest
We’re not your typical pest control bloggers. Instead of focusing on treating the symptoms, we want to identify long-term solutions for your pest problem. This way, you can treat your current pest issue plus prevent future invasions.
The second step in your safe pest control journey is to identify the pest. This can typically be done in a few different ways:
Seeing the pest: The easiest way to identify a pest is to catch them in the act. You may watch raccoons digging in your trash or see a sneaky wasp crawling up into the eaves of your roof. Ants may be visible in the kitchen or a mouse may streak across your living room floor. Easy peasy.
Identify the damage: Pests can be sneaky, and sometimes they only do their damage at night. Pests leave behind clues of their damage, such as the way the bite mark looks on your beautiful hostas or a chewed corner of your shed. These clues can help you identify the pest.
Check for pest nests and hiding places: Pests tend to make themselves comfortable in and around our homes. Check for holes in the yard, burrows under the shed, or even chewed holes in your walls. All of this can help you identify which pest is plaguing your family’s home.
Once you identify which creature is pestering your home and yard, search for them on our website to find a plethora of information on how to deal with them!
Step 3: Identify The Pest’s Home
Just because you find ants on your kitchen counter does not necessarily mean you should apply pest control on your kitchen counters. Instead, you’ll want to try to find the source of the pest. In other words, where is the pest coming from or living?
If it’s ants, try following the line back to wherever they’re entering your home. If it’s mice, look for bunches of paper or material to indicate a nest. By doing this, you’re applying pest control at the source, treating the ‘disease’ so to speak instead of just the symptom.
Some pests, like flies and mosquitoes, may not have a specific origin. Or do they? Mosquitoes are drawn to stagnant water, so check your yard and home for any puddles or equipment that is collecting water, such as garden tools, an old tire, or even an upturned bucket.
There’s always a ‘source’ for pests, and identifying this is paramount for safe pest control!
Step 4: Choose The Most Effective Safe Pest Control Option
In our articles, we offer a variety of ways to take care of pests. However, not every safe pest control recommendation will be effective for specific situations. It’s important to choose the most effective way to eliminate the problem, taking into consideration the specific pest and its behaviors.
Some of our safe pest control recommendations include:
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Habitat Modification
Physical Barriers
Scare Tactics
Scent Deterrents
Eco-Friendly Pest Control Sprays
Biological Control
So, if you have a problem with spiders in your basement, you’ll want to opt for eco-friendly sprays and scent deterrents instead of scare tactics or biological control. Let’s be honest, what could spiders possibly be afraid of?
On the other hand, a mouse in the house calls for physical barriers and habitat modification. Don’t worry, once you identify your pest, we recommend the best solutions for that specific pest!
Step 5: Stick With It
One of the most common reasons that safe pest control options fail is because of the need for reapplications. Eco-friendly pest control sprays can be washed away with rain and are broken down quickly in the environment, so they need to be reapplied often, about once every seven to ten days or after heavy rainfall.
Similarly, scent deterrents break down over time and must be reapplied often. The reason harsh chemical sprays last so long is that the synthetic chemicals persist in the environment, meaning they can’t be washed away by rain or broken down by sunlight or soil.
While this may seem like an advantage, most of those chemicals are toxic to people, including children, as well as pets, bees, mammals, birds, and fish. They can also destroy the healthy, natural environment in your soil, making it difficult to grow flowers or a garden.
So, despite the need to reapply your chosen eco-friendly deterrent, it’s the best option to keep your kids, pets, and the environment safe. Stick with it, and your pest problem will disappear!
Step 6: Reevaluate
The final step in safe pest control is to reevaluate the situation as time passes. Does your chosen repellent seem to be working, or has the issue remained unchanged?
If the chosen deterrent option doesn’t seem to be working, choose a different option or combine it with other repellent recommendations.
For example, sealing off entry points to deter mice is great, but if they’re already in your home, you may need to also employ humane mouse traps to catch the current pests. Once they are safely released outside, the sealed entry points will prevent re-entry!
Safety Practices For Children Around Pests
We have some fantastic guidance on how to keep your children safe around repellents and insecticides. Even if the product claims to be child-safe, it’s always best to err on the side of caution.
As we mentioned before, every child is unique. Some kids are naturally curious about new things in their environment, so it’s important to keep any insect repellent, sprays, traps, and other pest repellents out of reach or behind a barrier.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways to keep your child safe around deterrents, repellents, and pesticides.
Block The Area Off
One way to keep your child or children safe from applied products like pesticides or sprays is to block off the area. This might be as easy as placing a few cardboard boxes in front of the area to block a small child.
Depending on your child’s age, you may have to use something a little stronger, such as a baby gate or fencing. The key here is to block off the area long enough for any sprayed products to dry completely.
After the product has dried, monitoring your child within the area is still essential. It’s okay if they are near the dried product, but if they start sitting or crawling on it, it’s time to put the barriers back up.
Wash Affected Items
Accidents happen. If you’re applying a repellent and accidentally spray it on or near your child’s clothing, bedding, or blankets, wash them immediately. Low concentrations of repellents are unlikely to affect your child, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Wash items in hot water to remove residual chemicals, then promptly dry the item or hang it up to dry.
Keep Repellents Out Of Reach
Another way to keep children safe around pest repellents is to keep them out of reach. Most of the time, this simply means keeping them on the counter or in a locked cabinet where children do not have access to.
Child locks are an excellent tool for these scenarios. If you keep any pest repellent sprays or oils in the house, use child locks on the cabinets where you store them.
Alternatively, move these repellents to a shed or garage that the child does not have access to.
Read Labels Carefully
Product labels are a wealth of information that can help you identify any possible concerns about having your child around the product. Even natural products like essential oils can have adverse effects when not properly diluted.
Labels can also indicate whether or not a product must be diluted before use. This means that water must be added to the product because it is a concentrated version. This is true of all essential oils and many online pesticide products.
So, before using any pest control repellent, turn the bottle around and check out the label for any child-specific warnings. This is also a good opportunity to understand the ingredients in your product.
Why Choose Us To Solve Your Pest Control Needs
We’ve covered a lot of ground here concerning pests and children. So, why choose Pest Pointers to solve your pest problem? We’re here to help with quick, easy solutions that are safe for your children, home, pets, and the environment.
Here’s why you should put your trust in Pest Pointers to solve your pest problems:
Actionable Solutions: Our child-safe pest control recommendations are practical so that homeowners can read through our articles and have a plan of action that day. We avoid complicated pest control options and give you attainable goals for fast results.
Humane practices: Our articles are geared toward a variety of audiences, but we strive to prioritize child safety and humane practices. We’re not here to eliminate pests altogether but to coexist with them in a way that works for you and your family.
High-Level Research: A high level of research goes into each and every one of our articles. We gather information from credible sources, such as scientific journals and universities, to give you accurate, reliable information.
Specific Pest Solutions: Instead of providing broad articles covering various pests, we aim to focus on one pest at a time. That way, we give you highly specific information focusing solely on the pest you’re dealing with.
Identifying Pests: We offer tips and guides on getting rid of pests and help you identify mystery pests. If something has been munching on your garden plants, check out some of our articles about garden pests to narrow down what exactly is destroying them! Once you’ve identified the culprit, our articles provide solutions for eliminating the pest and restoring your home back to normal, which your family will thank you for!
The next time you see a mouse in the house or are sick of spiders in the basement, choose Pest Pointers to guide you to eco-friendly, safe pest control solutions for you and your family, little ones included!
Robyn is your friendly neighborhood writer, editor, and published author - boasting many years of experience in pest control, from which she magically weaves words into the captivating and engaging posts as we know them. When not tucked behind her laptop screen, she can be found embracing nature in the most thrilling ways possible. Rock climbing? Yes, please! Hiking? Absolutely! Traveling the U.S. with her husband, their lovable three-legged dog, and two mischievous cats? That’s her everyday reality. They live, love, and work in their cozy campervan, letting the road take them where it will, and finding inspiration in every sunrise, mountain peak, and wildlife sighting they encounter. Check out my Profile.
Pest Pointers was started in a cozy corner of Upstate New York, known for its expansive pastures, dense woods, and abundant wildlife pests. We are dedicated to providing YOU with solutions and insights into managing common pest issues. Starting out on over 50 acres of land and a freshwater bass pond with abundant pests, we combine firsthand experience with dedicated advice to help you tackle even the toughest of critters!
Step 5: Stick With It
Step 5: Stick With It
