Flea-Proof Your Home With This Delicious-Smelling Essential Oil

A flea infestation is unpleasant for you at best, not to mention your poor, scratching furballs, who've become unwilling hosts to these tiny tormentors. No doubt you're curious about what attracts fleas into our homes. Well, your beloved fur babies — dogs, cats, you name it — are the usual suspects, acting as carriers, but unwanted house guests like raccoons, birds, mice, or rats might also be to blame. If you're looking to get rid of fleas in your home, forget about dousing your living spaces with every possible synthetic pesticide on the shelf. Your knight in gleaming amber (bottle, to be precise) could be cinnamon essential oil. 

Cinnamon oil's potent aroma, while a treat for us, is more like Kryptonite for fleas. Yet, it doesn't stop at mere repulsion. This oil also infiltrates the nervous system of these critters, leading them to a paralytic state that culminates in death. And while this is happening, your home is smelling like one big fall-themed candle. An affordable household staple with superhero tendencies, cinnamon essential oil is not only an eco-friendly solution but a budget-savvy one as well. The cherry on top is that you aren't limited to one method of flea-proofing your home with cinnamon essential oil.

To reclaim your home from pesky fleas, arm yourself with a clean spray bottle, water, and the show's star, cinnamon essential oil. Fill your sprayer about ¾ full with water, and then concoct your lethal flea potion by adding 14 to 20 drops of the cinnamon essential oil. And remember, water and essential oils don't readily blend, so a good shake will ensure a well-mixed solution. Now get spraying. Your primary targets are areas in your home currently suffering a flea onslaught. Another crafty move involves drenching cotton balls in the cinnamon oil-water mixture and positioning them slyly in flea-attracting zones.

Alternatively, inject a fresh lease of life into your vacuum cleaner by adding a few drops of cinnamon essential oil to the filter. The heat generated by the motor as you vacuum helps to disperse the flea-repelling scent around your home. Here's your reality check, though: the key to eliminating these pests with essential oils isn't always in brutal, one-time battles but consistent, strategic strikes. And that's for a pretty good reason: fleas breed alarmingly quickly. In fact, a single female flea lays up to 50 eggs daily. Astonishingly, from a modest starting point of just ten female fleas, their army can expand to a mind-boggling 250,000 in a month (per Hartz).

Water and essential oil mix as well as oil and vinegar — a loveless marriage that can affect the proper misting of your anti-flea solution. So, how about adding an emulsifier? These substances bind the essential oil and water particles together to ensure that your flea-fighting blend gets uniformly sprayed. The H&B Oils Center Polysorbate 20 T-Maz on Walmart is an excellent recommendation. But be mindful, for with potent emulsifiers comes a higher risk of skin irritation.

But what about your pets? To them, cinnamon essential oil spells more foe than friend. According to WebMD, essential oils, including cinnamon oil, contain compounds like phenols, ketones, and terpenes, which can sound like a death knell for our feline friends. As far as dogs are concerned, the American Kennel Club explains that cinnamon essential oil is poisonous to them as well.

If you fancy a pet-friendly, natural alternative to cinnamon essential oil, consider food-grade diatomaceous earth. The powder's invisible, razor-sharp yet highly abrasive edges pierce through a flea's exoskeleton, causing fatal dehydration. But let's not assume these hacks are the ultimate salvation from a heavy flea infestation. When all else fails, nothing equals a professional intervention. As for prevention? Frequent and thorough sweeping and vacuuming and regularly washing pet bedding with soapy water could help keep those bloodsuckers at bay.