Florida Living: Keeping The Mosquitoes At Bay

During the beginning of the Florida series, I shared with you my favorite things that I thoroughly enjoy about living in Florida along with my aversions. You can read about them here:

• Florida Living: 10 Things I Love About Florida
• Florida Living: My Home State Aversions

Now it’s time to continue on about how we deal with one of the most pesky issues here. One of the major problems we encounter during our summers is mosquitoes. Believe me, it’s a serious problem here in Florida.

Just last week we received a pamphlet on our door letting us know that mosquito breeding grounds were found in our backyard. It went on to say that the Zika virus is moving it’s way north and how we can prevent basically being eaten alive.

This summer has been exceptionally hot. We’ve been warned to stay out of lakes and to not let our dogs drink from any sort of standing water. Mosquitoes aren’t just annoying; they can be dangerous to people and our furry friends. We must do our best to avoid coming in any sort of contact with the blood sucking creatures.

Mosquitoes are inevitable but there are a few things that my husband and I do to make them seem like less of a pesk. One of the things the pamphlet left on our door said was to stay indoors. Well, sometimes we want to enjoy ourselves and go outside. After all, we all know that staying cooped up in a house all day will make anybody antsy. There are ways to keep yourself safe while being outside and below is the list of ways I find to be most productive.

• Citronella candles are one of the more popular items people use when they’re outside having big family get together’s such as a BBQ or while sitting around a campfire. Personally, I do not think it’s the most effective method, but citronella candles have proven to help cut down on the mosquitoes! Within the next coming weeks I plan to try my own DIY citronella candle. I’ll be sure to share my experience! 🙂 
• Bug spray is probably the most popular thing we use and I feel as if it’s important that we choose the right kind of bug spray.  Now here’s the real question, should our bug spray be deet or deet free? According to what I can seem to understand, we should have some deet in our bug spray, but it should not contain more than 10-30% deet. Cutter Insect Repellent Spray seems to work really well and it only contains 10% deet too!
• The candles and bug spray work well but the two things my husband I find to be the MOST effective is a simple fan blowing in our direction and a bug zapper. One night we decided to hang a bug zapper by our front door to see what would happen. We immediately noticed a huge difference and oh how nice it was to not hear the dreadful, faint buzzing. We decided to leave the zapper on all night just for giggles. To our disbelief, the next morning the entire thing was covered with mosquitoes. I mean, we’re talking a jaw dropping amount were stuck to the little light. Now when we want to hang out outside for the night, we’ll turn on our bug zapper and enjoy the bug free zone. This is the bug zapper we use: Flowtron Electronic Insect Killer

That’s just a few of the ways that can help keep you and your family protected against the mosquitoes during the hot summer nights. Of course there’s other things you can do like plant certain things in your backyard which helps keeps the bugs away altogether, but that proposes a problem if you live in an apartment or condo such as us. I would definitely recommend the bug zapper!

What are some ways you and your family do to actively avoid the mosquito problem?  Let me know!