If you live in a part of the world prone to insect infestations — Florida, or the entire nation of Australia, for example — you’ve probably lost track of the number of methods you’ve used to try and prevent bugs from taking over your house and claiming squatter’s rights. But have you considered employing just a plain old bar soap?
After a video of popular Tiktoker Jordan the Stallion recommending Irish Spring soap for this exact purpose, a “federally licensed pesticide applicator/pest control technician” who goes by Big Boi Red on the app weighed in with his expert opinion: It’s true, Irish Spring can indeed keep bugs out of your house.
According to him, Irish Spring contains oils that result in sensory overload for small mammals, and if insects get the soap on their exoskeletons, it “dries them out to the point of death.” If you don’t have Irish Spring handy, he suggests a concoction of rosemary and peppermint oil that you can spray around your house or even on your person in order to keep bugs away.
Other experts have recommended using Irish Spring to keep pests away from your garden by slicing the bars up into small pieces and placing them in drawstring pouches tied to sticks planted around your property. But they also say that Irish Spring is most effective at deterring mammals like rabbits and deer, so if bugs are your concern, cook up some homemade insecticidal soap (yum!). Andrew Gaumond, Horticulturist, Botanist & Director of Content at Petal Republic recommends mixing “one spoon of fragrance-free liquid soap (dish or hand-soap is fine) with five spoons of vegetable oil with around 16 fluid ounces of warm water in a spray bottle.”
Whatever recipe you try — or whether you just decide to invest in cases of Irish Spring — your summer is gonna smell great. Just maybe not to the mosquitos you’re about to figuratively scrub with a genocidal bar of soap.
Comments