Tell me your fumigation stories
August 4, 2017 9:12 PM   Subscribe

We have to fumigate our house and the logistics of clearing out the house of people, pets, food and more is giving me a migraine. Give me your hopeful fumigation stories and perhaps any tips for the process. We'll be out of the house for about a week.
posted by Toddles to Home & Garden (2 answers total)
 
I oversaw the fumigation of a client's house with 2 pets about 10 years ago. It was no big deal, they were only required to be out of the home for 2 days, I think? Pets stayed with friends, they had a hotel room. My memory is WE were overly cautious, the respectable pest control firm said everything would be fine. I'm certain cabinets were wiped down and dishes went through the dishwasher. Linens were washed. No humans or pets got sick, bugs were dead. That's all I remember.
posted by jbenben at 12:03 AM on August 5, 2017


Best answer: Hi, I just had my house fumigated for termites 3 weeks ago. It was a pain in the ass to prep the house for the fumigators, but the upside of going through our pantry and medicine cabinet is that we finally purged a lot of stuff that we realistically weren't going to use or had expired. It also gave us the kick needed to do some re-organization.

Here are some things I wish I would have done differently;
- Cleaned out the pantry, fridge, and freezer sooner. We ended up eating some crappy meals in an effort to get through stuff. We probably should have just budgeted a week of take-out into the cost of the fumigation.

- Had a 'Drink Down the Bar' party. This may not apply to you, but moving the roughly ~150 bottles that comprise our bar across the street to a neighbors house was exhausting.

- Dug up plants further out than recommended where there was some hardscaping, or the soil was loose. We lost a couple plants that we could have transplanted.

- Moved potted plants sooner. We have a lot of plants in the house and on our porch, Probably 50 or so. Moving all of these to a corner of the yard away from the house over a few days was way too much work. We should have spaced it out and moved 4 or 5 a day, especially those that are more sensitive.

- Treated the corner of the yard we moved the plants to for ants prior. Pretty self-explanatory, ants took up residence in the plants. It's been a pain killing them and not the plants.

Bottom line is really just expect everything on your to-do list to take twice as long as you think it should, and build that into your timeline.
posted by nulledge at 9:06 AM on August 7, 2017


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