If you manage a college dormitory, you know better than most how vulnerable they can be to pests. College students have a knack for making the kinds of messes that nearly all pests love. When students leave for the holidays, it’s the perfect time for pests to take their places. Unless you do something about it, that is.

Take advantage of the quiet you have during the holidays to take a few extra anti-pest precautions. By following easy tips and tricks like these, you can make sure your dorm has a pest-free new year.
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Familiarize yourself with common dorm room pests

The pests most common pest infestations in dorm rooms are rodents, flies, and bed bugs. Rodents and flies are particularly drawn to the food waste and messiness that tends to happen in dorm rooms. Bed bugs love dorms because there are so many linens in relatively small spaces. There are also all kinds of travelers coming in and out constantly.

While dorms are more susceptible to these pests, that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to exclude them. The holiday break is an ideal time to conduct yearly bed bug treatment maintenance. Prevent fly infestations by scheduling regular fly drain treatments and teaching tenets how to keep flies out. You could also install non-lethal rat traps in the corners of your building. As always, you should also seal up access points in your basement and crawl spaces.
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Teach students how to prevent pests

You can do this in all kinds of ways. Post paper notices in the hallways. Send emails en masse. Host an ice cream and pest prevention training social… or something! Whatever you do, just motivate them to make decisions that help you prevent infestations.

Appropriately, education will be your biggest pest prevention tool. It will probably be something of an uphill battle. There’s no way to force a teenager to take out their garbage often enough. Frame pest prevention as something that will help the students living in your dorm–it obviously will, after all. Remind them to vacuum, wash their sheets, put away food, take out garbage, and report leaks.
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Inspect the perimeter thoroughly during the holiday break

College students can do a lot of damage to the buildings they live in. Sometimes, they’ll even inflict damage around the borders of buildings as they attempt to squeeze inside. The longer this damage goes unnoticed, the more pests can use it to infiltrate dorm rooms.

Now is the perfect time to find and fix damage around your buildings. Look for crumbling caulk, loose door and window sealing, broken bricks, and damaged screens. Replace, tighten, fix, and repair. If pests can’t get in in the first place, then they can’t multiply and cause a disturbance.
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Partner with a trusted commercial pest control company

Even when you do everything right, sometimes pests will find their way in. When that happens, make sure you know a reliable pest service you can call right away.

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Assured Environments is happy to be there for anyone in charge of dormitory management and pest prevention. We’ve studied hard to stay at the top of the class, and we’re happy to put our education to work.