Carpet beetles do a lot of damage to furniture, carpets, clothing, and other items at home. When left untreated, they can continue ruining items and make it difficult to control carpet beetle infestations. Luckily, these pests are easy to eradicate by simply using the right treatment plan and the right products.
Preparing Your Home before Treatment
Preparing your home before doing treatment helps in making the control process easier. These steps may seem like your usual cleaning routines, but all of these make a large difference in getting positive results. To get started, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Vacuum Daily
It may seem like a simple task, but this alone will help greatly in sucking up carpet beetles in all stages of their life cycle. After vacuuming, empty the contents to a garbage bag, seal it tightly, and throw it in your outdoor trash bin. Do this daily when treating the pests.
Make sure that you also vacuum dark areas such as closets. Do the same to items that can’t go in the washing machine like upholstered furniture, rugs, and curtains. This will also help control the accumulation of lint hair in your home.
Step 2: Clean and Wash Fabric in High Heat
Gather all items you can wash and then dry them on the highest heat setting. This will kill adult carpet beetles, larvae, and even carpet beetle eggs. Being fabric pests, these insects may hide in your towels, bedding, and other linens. So, make sure you treat these items as well
If there are items you can’t wash like wool-silk, try to bring them to the dry cleaners or dry-clean them yourself. This process can also help in killing the adult insects, eggs, and larvae.
Step 3: Steam Furniture and Carpets
The fastest way to get rid of carpet beetles is by using your steam cleaner. You can use this equipment in treating various items and kill the pests effortlessly.
After these steps, you can now move on to other methods. Regardless if you’re dealing with black carpet beetles, furniture carpet beetles, common carpet beetles, or varied carpet beetle larvae and eggs, these steps will help you get successful results.
Start Treatment Using Insecticide
When using an insecticide, it is necessary that you choose one that is meant for carpet beetles. This will save you from mixing ingredients or chemicals. Thus, allowing you to proceed to treatment and save your time and effort.
Since these beetles will lay their eggs nonstop. However, finding an insecticide with IGR or insect growth regulator will prevent the eggs hatch into larvae. This results in the reduction of the population of the beetles and containing infestations.
If you can’t afford a pre-mix insecticide, you can always mix water, IGR, and insecticide in your sprayer. Make sure that you still read the labels to know the right amount of product and water needed in the mixture.
Treating Your Home
When using insecticides, always wear your complete protective gear to avoid or lessen exposure to chemicals used during treatment. So, to get started, the following are important areas where you should apply the insecticide:
- Rugs and carpets. If you have imported oriental rugs, make sure that you read the label of the insecticide and know if it is safe to use in such items. There are insecticides that are only good for spot treatments, so be careful in treating such items before starting.
- Around window and door frames
- Under furniture
- In shelves
- In cracks and crevices
- In the corners of closets
Always keep your pets and children out of the area you are treating. Give the product about 2 hours to dry before allowing access to treated areas.
Treat Hard to Reach Places with Insecticide Dust
If you are having problems reaching certain areas, it is highly recommended that you use insecticide dust. This may work slower than insecticides, but it can still work in killing the pests.
How to Monitor Current Level of Infestation
After treatment, it is not a 100% guarantee that the infestation will be resolved completely. To monitor the infestation, you can use glue board traps. Place the traps near your pantries, closets, and dark areas.
These traps will help in catching the remaining adult beetles. Always check on the traps and replace them when necessary. Do this for the following weeks and check if there is a change in the number of beetles captures.
If the activities continue, you might want to call for professional pest control services.
