5 ways to keep your office clean & pest-free

Some of the common office complaints are typically around smelly washrooms, dusty environment or dirty facility and poor facility maintenance. However, the nerve-wrecking and worry-some complaint is usually about pests bugging employees at work.

5 common office mistakes that attracts pests

Spending at least 8 hours at work, some of our actions and activities could potentially place us at risk of a pest infestation! Here are the 5 common mistakes that we usually make at work in the office:

• We tend to eat at our desk for lunch while working, or snacks every now and then for a break. While it is not healthy to eat during work activities, these munching activities could mean spilling food crumbs or bits around the desk, chair and floor, and attracting cockroaches and ants to your workstation.
• Leaving unsealed drinks unattended on desk is a common habit among employees, in some instances; the drinks are not cleared and disposed after working hours. Moist is a common pest attractant, however, sweet flavored drinks with sugary or honey element would attract Sugar Ants.
• Improper waste management is a common pest culprit. For example, disposing half eaten food meals or unfinished drinks into the waste bin located at your desk or not emptying waste bins regularly and diligently would attract pests who source for such food for survival. Always remember to dispose them in the appropriate area, such as pantry or designated disposal location. Read more on what happens if you leave waste undisposed overnight.
• Irregular facility maintenance check could bring some risk factors, especially for buildings that are older or with weaken and damaged structures, resulting in gaps, crevices, holes and pipe leaks. These multiple proofs of entries give numerous accesses for pests such as ants, cockroaches and rodents’ access to your office area. Rodents in particular, tend to gnaw on wirings found in IT server room (as their teeth never stop growing) to trim their teeth, and in many health and safety cases, these gnawing causes short circuit risks or even worse cases such as fire.
• Pantry is a popular gathering space for resting and carrying out food preparation and consumption activities. It is also a common space for food disposal, wastage and water usage. This also means high risk of attracting pests who requires food source, garbage and moist to feed on. Without diligent housekeeping and maintenance, over time, it will turn into high risk hot spot for these common office pests.

DIY pest control methods

On and off, every office would at least engage in some quick solution and DIY methods, but typically, these solutions somehow do not work and employees tend to experience recurring pests and in some cases, the recurrence will deteriorate further. Proper site inspection is critical to identify root source of the problem, especially at blind spots and difficult to access spaces and areas for obvious signs.

Here is a list of common ants pest myth and DIY home methofs. Read more to find out if these works

• Using cucumber peels as ants repellent
• Drawing lines with chalks to deter ants
• Flushing and washing off ants with water (Sometimes even hot water)
• Sprucing with peppermint oil to repel rats
• Placing pandan leaf around to prevent cockroach entry

Affordable commercial pest management solutions

Let our team of specialists take care of your office pest worries with affordable and integrated pest management solutions. Help is just a call away at (65) 6347 8138 or drop your online enquiry.