Roaches, bed bugs, ants, and termites — these are just a few of the common pests that we see when we visit Memphis businesses to do perform professional commercial pest control services.
These pests are not only annoying, they have the power to close down a business for health reasons. While we’re thrilled to help our fellow Memphis businesses out, we know you’d rather not have to contact us to begin with!
Fortunately, there are some things you can do to discourage these pests from entering your facility. Discover what steps you can take to keep your Memphis business pest free.
Offices
A major issue with office spaces is leftover food and drinks that attract bugs and rodents.
Ask employees to avoid leaving open soda, juice and similar containers on desks, shelves and elsewhere around the office. Most pests are attracted to these sugary drinks, so they should be thrown away after each work day in a covered wastebasket. Plus, if they aren’t left out on desks, they are less likely to spill leaving sugary residue on carpets and floors (which attract bugs as well).
Clean the break room each week, dropped food items or even a few crumbs left on the counter can attract pests.
Empty waste baskets each day. Foods and drinks that are left in a waste basket for more than a day can cause pests to show up in your office. Be sure to have a plastic bag in each waste basket to keep the receptacle itself clean.
Warehouses
Pests can hide in the smallest cracks and crevices of a warehouse. Look through your warehouse for areas around pipes and breaks in walls that you can seal to prevent pests from entering.
Check the condition of the doors and windows in your warehouse. Pests often slip through broken areas on the seal of a window or door. So, if you find any damaged or broken areas, be sure to fix them.
Keep food consumption in one area like a break room. This keeps crumbs, spilled food and drinks to one area, so it can be cleaned thoroughly to discourage pests.
Don’t forget that pests can travel into a warehouse from shipments of boxes, pallets and other items. Giving these items a quick examination before bringing them into the warehouse gives you the opportunity to brush any pests off them before they get into your warehouse.
Medical Buildings
Many pests live in trees and feed off of the leaves. Keeping trees and bushes near the entrances well maintained and manicured can go a long way to limiting pests getting into healthcare buildings.
Similar to warehouses, another common entrance point is around windows and pipes. Facility management should regularly check the sealing and caulking around windows and entrances in a medical facility to reduce the opportunities pests will have entering the building.
Disposing of flowers, empty food containers and drinks each day can keep pests from appearing in a medical office.
Don’t store food or any edible items on shelves near the floor. This makes it harder for pests to detect and reach things they can eat.
Food Service and Restaurants
Keeping a restaurant or any type of food service facility clean is a very effective way to deter pests. Frequent sweeping, vacuuming and sanitizing a food service facility is essential.
Dumpsters and garbage cans near a food service facility are very attractive to pests. Dumpsters and garbage cans must have firmly closing lids (and preferably lockable lids). Any spilled or overflowing garbage need to be cleaned up as soon as possible — outdoor garbage containers attract rats and rodents, and even sometimes much larger animals…
Store food items and boxes off the floor of a restaurant. Rodents and other pests can chew through cardboard and plastic to get to food items.
Hotels and Motels
Clean around the edges of the mattresses and behind the headboard every day. Bed bugs commonly hide and reproduce in these areas in a hotel room.
Wash the bed linens including the pillowcases in hot water every day. This can keep an invasion of bed bugs from occurring. Understand that guests often bring bed bugs with them, and that can set off an infestation. Once your places has reputation for bed bugs it can be extremely difficult to break that reputation.
Vacuum and dust rooms after each set of guests checks out. When spilled drinks, crumbs and dropped food items are cleaned up right away it’s less likely that roaches and other pests will show up.
Get your hotel rooms checked by a professional pest control technician on a regular basis to prevent an infestation.
Putting these simple tips into practice can keep pests of all kinds out of your business or facility making it a healthier, more pleasant place to be.
