Pests, smells, mould and the things that keep coming back. The pattern is the same for all of them: find the cause, not the symptom, or you will be doing this again in a fortnight.
Pests
- Ants follow a scent trail to food. Break the trail with hot soapy water, remove the
food, seal the gap. Bait beats spray because the workers carry it home.
- Mice need a gap the width of a pencil. Steel wool and filler around pipes, food in
sealed containers, traps against walls where they actually run.
- Moths eat wool, and prefer it slightly soiled. Clean before storing. Freezing an item
for a few days kills eggs.
- Fruit flies breed in the last of something: a drain, the bottom of a bin, a forgotten
potato.
- Silverfish want damp and starch, so it is a damp problem. See
Call someone for wasp nests, rats, bed bugs, and anything in a cavity. Rats are a public health matter and many councils will deal with them. Bed bugs defeat domestic products almost every time, and a failed treatment turns a two-week job into a six-month one.
Smells
Almost every persistent household smell is one of four things: damp, drains, something organic somewhere you have not looked, or the bin. Air fresheners cover all four without touching any of them.
- Damp smell means moisture. It will not go until the moisture does.
- Drain smell is usually a dry trap. Run the tap.
- Fridge smell: bicarbonate in an open tub, and check for the thing that caused it.
- Trainers and bins: bicarb, and time.
Mould
Clean it, then fix the ventilation. See heating, damp and energy for the three causes and how to tell them apart, because the treatment is different for each.