How To Remove Carpet Beetles From Your Home

Like their name would indicate, carpet beetles are a household pest that often takes up residence in your carpeting and other fabrics. Carpet beetles are either tan or black, with mottled variations in between, and can carry diseases as well as cause a great deal of damage to the soft surface within your home. However, if you do happen to have a carpet beetle problem in your home, don't worry too much: there are a few things that you can do to reduce and remove their population and get your house back to normal again:

Understand the Extent

The first and most important thing that you should do in the event that you have carpet beetles in your home is to find out the extent of the problem. Carpet beetles tend to congregate in dark areas, so you may have to lift up your furniture to check the underside and the carpeting underneath. Look for stains on your carpet, empty shells, and live bugs to determine just where the beetles are and how far they've spread.

Vacuuming

For immediate results, you can use a vacuum cleaner to suck up beetles in the infested area. Make sure that you use a canister vacuum, and that you open the canister outside of the home to prevent any loose beetles from making it back into your home. However, keep in mind that vacuuming will only clear out very small infestations: larger populations will likely be too widespread for vacuuming to effectively dent their population.

Wash Your Clothes

It's also a good idea to put all of your sheets, clothes, and other soft fabrics that will fit into the wash, to kill any beetles which may be clinging to them as well as any lain eggs. Make sure to set the wash to hot, as colder water will be less effective at killing the insects.

Boric Acid

Alternatively, to proactively keep carpet beetles from breeding in your home, and to deal with larger infestations, you can make use of boric acid to clean your carpets. Boric acid is sold in most grocery stores and comes in a powdered form that can be spread on your carpet and furniture. Keep in mind that boric acid is toxic, and shouldn't be used around small children and pets, though it is safe to have around the home (though it may bleach darker colors).

Professional Removal

However effective the above methods may be for treating a small to moderately sized carpet beetle population, they are likely going to fall short of removing the entirety of a full-blown infestation. This is especially true due to the high resiliency of carpet beetle eggs, which are small, hard to locate, and able to withstand physical pressure without breaking. If you can't seem to get a handle on the carpet beetles in your home, you may have to call a pest removal specialist to use the proper chemicals and equipment to fully eliminate them for good.

Check out a website like http://lecksexterminators.com/ for more information and assistance.