Two outdoor cats + thick dense wooded living + summer heat = FLEAS!
We have been battling fleas for a few weeks now and I wanted to share our success story now that we have officially controlled them with natural methods. Having a small baby in the house and our desire to keep chemicals out led to our search for a natural flea control method. After doing some online research and blog hopping, I settled on a few different techniques.
1. Vacuum, Vacuum, Vacuum
2. SALT (Borax and Baking Soda)
Sprinkle this on any carpeted surface and let it sit for any amount of time. The longer the better, as the salt dehydrates the fleas. Then vacuum and repeat daily or every few days.
3. White Vinegar
Most of our house is tile floor so i made up a vinegar solution and mopped once a week to help kill the flea eggs. I also put this vinegar solution into a spray bottle and sprayed all the furniture and any other areas that I couldn’t vacuum or mop. Fleas don’t like citrus so using my infused vinegar was perfect. I would spray this multiple times a day.
The solution:
3/4 white vinegar infused with orange peels
1/4 water
Essential Oils of Peppermint, Tea Tree and Eucalyptus
4. Apple Cider Vinegar
Fleas are attracted to the smell of the Apple Cider Vinegar, so I put a small dish of it under a book shelf and I would find a few dead fleas in it every day. Similar concept to that of catching fruit flies.
5. Wash bedding and keep up on laundry
This can be easier said then done, but if you try to keep the amount of laundry piles to a minimum and keep things clean and put away, this keeps the fleas off of them. Washing bedding will help keep flea eggs from hatching. Using vinegar in your ‘fabric softener’ area of the washer is a great way to incorporate the vinegar into the washing cycle as well. This will help kill the fleas.
It took about 2-3 weeks, but I think we have beat the cycle!
What kind of natural flea removal techniques have you used in your home?
