House Bugs

Our homes should be our sanctuaries, a place where we can relax and feel safe in clean surroundings.  Our homes are the places where our lives take place, and most of us do our utmost to make sure to keep the things we like and want in our homes while excluding the things we don't like.  How annoying, then, when we are faced with house bugs that, while part of the natural world, feel like invaders once they've breached the walls and windows of our homes?  From ants, to centipedes, to stinkbugs, and the most dreaded house bug of all- the cockroach, we usually wish there were some way we could keep these bugs out of our homes, and keep them out.  This article is meant to help those who are struggling with bug problems big and little and present solutions for dealing with these little critters.  Read on, and read carefully, because some of the solutions are ones that you've likely never thought about.

First thing's first.  Before you go out and buy all sorts of toxic bug sprays to deal with your pesky insects, ask yourself 1. If you want to bring such toxins into your home, toxins which are dangerous for pets as well as humans and damaging to the environment and 2. If you really need to use pesticides for your problem. 
Unless you have a really serious situation, there's almost always better ways to deal with the problem.  One of the simplest ways to cut down on bugs in your home is to keep it clean.  Less dust means less dust mites and other assorted tiny insects.  When you have less of these, you also have less insects that prey on them, like spiders.  Keep in mind that everything has an ideal habitat, and the idea with keeping insects out of the home is to not create the habitat for them!  Ants will come into the house in search of food, so keep your food tightly sealed and clean up any crumbs that fall to the floor after eating or snacking.  Your garbage may also be what's attracting ants, so if you have edibles in there, you might want to keep them sealed and off limits to critters.  The same goes for compost.  Kitchen compost buckets can give off an extremely strong smell that is attractive to ants and, on a more disgusting level, cockroaches.  Take out compost right away, every day, or else keep it so tightly sealed that not even odors can escape.  Cockroaches do not like a clean environment, so don't invite them in by letting your home be dirty! 

Of course, cockroaches can be found even in meticulously clean homes.  In these cases, a non-toxic way to cope can be to use roach motels, which attract the roaches with sweet smelling bait and trap their feet with a strong adhesive substance.  These can let you monitor your roach populations. 
Another somewhat toxic (but far less so that DDT) thing  you can do is to use boric acid.  This is usually mixed with flour and other foods to attract cockroaches, which eat the mixture and die from the boric acid.  Other cockroaches who eat the dead cockroach also die.  You do have to take care that pets and children don't get their hands on the boric acid, though. 
An old fashioned approach to controlling cockroaches is to keep chickens and let them roam in your yard.  The chickens will hunt down and eat any cockroaches they find.  There's even a saying that if you have chickens in the yard, you won't have cockroaches in the home.

For other insect pests, especially flying ones like flies and mosquitoes, an interesting way to keep their numbers in check is to invite bats to hang out around your home (I promised to share some little known bug control strategies).  Bats swoop through the air, gobbling up hordes of flying house bugs every day.  They are like guardians who keep you safe from bugs.  To attract them, you can build a bat house.  Instructions for a DIY bat house can be found on the internet, or you can purchase one from a company that makes them. 

If I had stink bugs in my house, I would carefully check to see how they are getting in and then seal those areas with caulk.  Gaps around windows are common points of entries for bugs of all kinds, and sealing these can really cut down on the number of bugs that can get in. Check everywhere, including the fireplace, where many people have reported seeing them come in.  As far as how to get rid of stink bugs in the house, many chemicals are suggested but I would be extremely wary of using these as they may only temporarily fix the problem, especially if new bugs can still get in.  Keeping them out seems to be the only real solution.

Some bugs, like most spiders, are relatively harmless. I also wouldn't be worried with having lady bugs in house, and would just catch and release them outside as they are beneficial predators that eat annoying garden pests like aphids.  Remember that not all bugs are alike and some are our friends.