Here are some useful household tips that are handy to know about:

• Basil repels flies and mosquitoes.
• Rub Vick’s on your pants or legs to deter ticks.
• Use half vanilla (pure vanilla) and half water and for a mosquito and tick repellent.
• Dab lavender oil on your pulse points; it smells great on you but repels insects.
• Buy a mesh/net laundry bag that you would use for washing nylons and 5 boxes of moth balls. Put the moth balls in the bag and hang it in your garage near the door to get rid of mice, birds, and bugs.
• To prevent mice from gaining entry to your garage, stop up any openings with steel wood pads. Mice will not chew through them.
• Place bay leaves in kitchen drawers and in flour and sugar containers to keep crawling insects away.
• Slugs and snails can be killed by pouring salt on them.
• To remove tough bottle tops and jar lids, use a pair of rubber gloves or twist a fat rubber band around the lid. Easy!
• If you store your best silver in self-sealing plastic bags, it won’t tarnish so fast.
• Zippers won’t stick if you rub them with the edge of a soap bar.
• To remove a hem crease simply sponge the material with white vinegar and press with a warm iron.
• Wiping the inside of the fridge with vinegar helps prevent mildew.
• Never use disinfectants to clean the fridge – food items will pick up taste and odour.
• Removing the smell of onion, garlic or fish from your hands is easy. Simply turn on the tap, wet your hands and then rub them back and forward over the stainless steel spout (using a wringing motion). You will find that your hands now smell fresh and clean.
• Use a piece of bread to pick up fragments of broken glass. Saves your hands from getting cut and does a great job.

Keep an eye out for more useful home articles from Tony’s Termites & Pest Control! Just one more way we like to make life easier for you.

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Ants can be one of the most annoying visitors to have in and around your home. Here are some quick, natural ways to deter ants.

• Keep food in sealed containers and surfaces clean of scraps, rubbish and crumbs. Ants need food to survive.
• Remove pools of water, ants drink as well as eat so try not to give them a reason to come and visit.
• Mop your floors regularly with bleach or other cleaning substances.
• Keep the rubbish bins away from your home.
• Seal up window and wall cracks.
• Sprinkling chili pepper, paprika or dried peppermint on ant tracks will help deter them.
• Make sure your garden has no aphid, whiteflies or mealybugs. These pests excrete honeydew which ants love.
• Pour hot water on ant mounds and cracks where ants appear.

If ants, or any of our Queensland’s Most Wanted line-up, continue to be a problem please give the team at Tony’s Termites a call, we are here to help.