Chiggers are not like mosquitoes. They don’t bite on contact and fly away. After landing on you, they spend 20-30 minutes crawling around looking for a spot where skin is thin and tight against clothing – waistbands, sock lines, the back of the knee. That delay is your advantage. Stop them during the crawl phase and you prevent the bite entirely. These three methods do exactly that.
Apply Permethrin to Clothing Before Yard Work
Permethrin is a synthetic insecticide that bonds to fabric and kills chiggers (and ticks, mosquitoes, and other arthropods) on contact. Unlike DEET, you don’t apply it to skin – it goes on your clothes and gear, where it stays active through 6 washes or about 6 weeks of regular use.
Buy permethrin spray designed for clothing and outdoor gear. Spray the outer surface of pants, socks, shoes, and long-sleeve shirts until damp, then hang them to dry completely (typically 2-3 hours). Don’t apply to clothes while wearing them. Once dried, treated clothing is safe against skin and doesn’t transfer to the wearer.
Tuck pants into socks after treating. Tuck shirts into pants. This eliminates the gaps chiggers use to reach skin under clothing edges. A permethrin-treated outfit combined with proper tucking stops chiggers almost completely.
Wear Protective Clothing in High-Risk Areas
Even with permethrin-treated clothes, physical coverage matters for high-infestation areas like vegetation edges, unmowed patches, or wooded borders. The more skin covered, the fewer opportunities chiggers have to reach it.
Wear long pants, long sleeves, and closed-toe shoes with socks any time you’re working in suspect vegetation. Choose light colors – you can see chiggers on light fabric before they reach your skin. Tuck everything in (pants into socks, shirt into pants). Add an insect repellent with DEET or picaridin to exposed skin at the wrists, ankles, and collar.
This isn’t about eliminating all risk. It’s about stacking the odds so the crawl phase ends with them dead or stuck on fabric rather than under your waistband.
Shower Within Two Hours of Yard Exposure
This is the most effective single step most people skip. Chiggers spend up to 30 minutes crawling before they find a bite site and begin feeding. A shower within 2 hours of being in a chigger-prone area removes them before attachment happens.
Strip off clothes in the garage or laundry room – don’t track chiggers into the house. Shower with hot water and scrub vigorously with a washcloth. Pay specific attention to areas where clothing was tight against skin: waistbands, sock lines, bra straps, and underwear elastic. Wash your hair. The mechanical action of scrubbing is what removes them – soap alone won’t do it.
Bag and wash the clothes separately from your regular laundry. Chiggers that fall off in the laundry room or on the bathroom floor can still find their way to you. This is probably the most important step in personal protection because it costs nothing, requires no products, and has a near-100% success rate if you do it consistently within the window.
