Super Mom Hacks

Permethrin Clothing Treatment: A DIY Guide (Save Money!)

Tick season is going to be especially bad this year. More ticks = more tick bites = greater risk of contracting Lyme Disease or another tick-borne illness. And as I noted in my last post, permethrin clothing treatment is your best bet to keep ticks away.

https://supermomhacks.com/favorite-mom-hacks/permethrin-clothing-treatment/

Of course, you can buy clothing commercially treated with permethrin for both adults and children. If you’re a grownup who spends a lot of time outdoors (camping, hiking, gardening, etc.), then commercially-treated clothes are a super investment.

You can also send your favorite outdoor attire to InsectShield and have them apply permethrin to your clothes for you.

But given how quickly kids outgrow clothing, you may prefer to DIY permethrin clothing treatment on their summer attire.

I recently tried this, and so far we’ve been very pleased with the results.

About DIY Permethrin Clothing Treatment

Applying permethrin to fabric on your own at home is different from buying commercially-treated clothing in several ways.

This was only about half the clothing I treated recently; as soon as I laid it all out, I realized my 24-ounce bottle wasn’t enough.

Getting ready to apply permethrin

First, figure out what you want to treat. Gather it all and pile it up.

Then count up how many “outfits” or “items” you have, and do the math. (A pair of socks or shoes counts as one item; an “outfit” = two items.)

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for Amazon Prime’s free two-day shipping. Waited til this bottle came and then just treated everything all at once.


Tips for applying permethrin

What you’ll need, besides the clothing and the spray:

I laid out my stuff to spray on a back deck, and started a stopwatch on my phone. After spraying the side facing up on each piece for 30 seconds (as per the directions) I flipped over each piece to spray the other side. Then I spread out the clothes just inside the door, on the drying rack that usually holds the girls’ snow-covered gear in winter.

In contrast, my friend Iris hung each item to spray on its own hanger and sprayed them, one at a time, just outside her garage with the door open. As soon as she’d treated each piece, she hung it on the wire shelving at the back of her garage to dry overnight.

The “overnight” part is important. The sprays we used each said they should be dry in 2 hours, or 4 in especially humid conditions. It wasn’t particularly humid where we live during the week that Iris and I were doing this recently. But the clothes took a lot longer than 4 hours to dry completely. (Maybe because applying the required 3 ounces per item on smaller kids’ attire = more liquid on a smaller space = longer to dry?)

Other tips to consider

 

Have you done your own permethrin clothing treatment at home? How did it go? Let us know in the comments!

Did you enjoy these tips for saving money by DIYing permethrin?

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