Addressing House When Dealing With Fleas
You also must address your home environment. Very little of flea lifecycle is on your pet or you. Most of the time they are in your carpet, between floor boards, in the upholstered furniture, in your/your pet’s bedding.
Extensive Use of Cedar Mulch in your landscaping can be helpful in keeping fleas out of your yard. They do not like Cedar.
Just washing and treating the dog/cat for fleas is not sufficient. When you bathe your dog/cat - also thoroughly clean house - vacuum. A bagged system is highly recommended - cup dust system allows fleas to hop out and back into house. After you are finished vacuuming put the vacuum bag in a ziplock bag and put in trash to keep fleas from being able to escape into house.
Then you must mop all hard surfaced floor. Use a non-toxic cleaner, which is important because your pets live on the floor and will be affected by what you use. Suggestion: Protective Blend Concentrated Household Cleaner.
You also have to wash all bedding - yours and your pet’s and any washable pillow covers on furniture.
This cleaning of house needs to be repeated in 1-2 weeks to deal with hatching eggs and pupal stages, which are protected from cleaning. Fleas go through a pupal stage (cocoon) which is very protective of larva. This pupal stage last from 1 week to a year…dependent on available blood meal walking by.
And possibly you will need to repeat entire cleaning process again in 1-2 more weeks. Thoroughness, Persistency and Consistency are the key to successfully ridding your pet(s) and home of fleas.
(Remember to bathe your pet weekly or more often, flea comb to find any fleas, and use essential oils to shield your pets from fleas/ticks/mosquitoes.)