How to Kill Pests Without Professional Help or Toxic Chemicals

Household pests can be tough to get rid of. Most often, the mistakes homeowners make involve the chemicals they use to try to kill the pests on their own. Insect extermination is actually a complex field. Some pests will be completely unfazed by some insecticides. By using too much of an ineffective pesticide, you may endanger your own health or, sometimes, help the pests in your home to build up a resistance to the toxin; making it useless for future infestations.

You can kill pests without using any particularly dangerous chemicals. In fact, it’s best to leave that to trained professionals. Most pesticides are neurotoxins of one sort or another and definitely not the types of things that you want to be exposed to unnecessarily. One good option is boric acid, a powdered acid that kills one of the most hated pests in the world: roaches. This acid sticks to their shells—they can’t resist checking it out—and slowly eats holes in their exoskeleton. Best of all, it’s not a neurotoxin, which means there’s no way they can gain resistance to this substance. The damage is entirely mechanical.

For spiders (including the much feared Brown Recluse and Black Widow), try spraying around your doors and windows with Lemon Pledge. Spiders ‘taste’  with their feet and they can’t stand citrus or lemon tastes. This won’t kill the spiders, but instead will persuade them to move on and not spin a web anywhere you have sprayed. Do a spray every few weeks for maximum protection.

For other pests, you need to be specific in your choice of poisons. For flies and other airborne pests, consider pest strips. These release no chemicals into the environment and work very well.