What Can You Do Against Insects In Your Home?

Insects are very useful animals in nature, but we don’t want them in our homes

Today we are about how we can avoid insects in the home.

They are an important part of our ecosystem and are becoming less and less due to industrial agriculture with its pesticides.

Who still remembers windshields that were covered with insects after a short drive in the summer and that no longer exist today? Nonetheless, insects  are not really welcome in the apartment .

Insects: beneficial insects in the house?

In organic agriculture, insects are used in a targeted manner in order to cope with pests even without poison.

Earwigs, for example, eat aphids and are used against them in particular in fruit growing. There are also beneficial insects in our own four walls.

According to research, there are around 300 spiders in the average household.

Even if you keep cleaning well, you know that there is another cupboard sitting behind the next cupboard, looking forward to food in the form of flies, mosquitoes and other insects that annoy us humans.

It is not possible to avoid an insect plague with spiders and other beneficial insects in the apartment, so we have tips for you on what to do if you have insects in the apartment.

Basic requirements against insects in the apartment

The safest method against insects is not to attract them at all. Then you don’t have to worry about how to get rid of it.

Dispose of leftover food

Many insects love leftovers. The sweeter and fermenter, the better for them.

So make sure that you always dispose of leftovers, especially fruit or fruit bowls, immediately and also quickly wash dishes on which such foods have been eaten.

So no insect can absorb the weather and walk into your kitchen!

Food should be kept in securely closed containers

It is best to pour sugar, flour and other delicacies (e.g. for food moths) into screw-top jars immediately after buying them.

Your trash can should be tightly lockable

For example with a fixed lid, not with a swing lid or even without a lid! You should also get into the habit of throwing away the garbage every day so that it doesn’t even become interesting for insects.

Close cracks

Are windows leaking because the putty is crumbling? Are there cracks in the masonry? Have tile joints broken out? Does the door no longer close properly?

Close such cracks, joints and holes quickly and easily with some silicone from the hardware store.

Fruit flies

If you have stored fruit openly that is already a bit overripe or damaged in some places, the smell will attract fruit flies.

These then lay their eggs in the rotten fruit, so that you will soon have your own fruit fly breeding program.

This can also happen if you don’t empty your organic trash can regularly and the fruit flies are happy about the fruit remains in it.

The first remedy is to remove the fruit in question from the apartment. The hungry fruit flies can then be caught easily and without poison.

To do this, simply place a bowl or deep saucer full of vinegar in which you have added a splash of washing-up liquid.

This destroys the surface tension of the vinegar and the fruit flies drown in the vinegar while trying to drink from it.

House dust mites

House dust mites feed on human skin flakes and like it warm and humid.

That is why they like to stay where people give off heat, moisture and flakes of skin: in bed, in upholstered furniture and carpets.

Some people have an allergy and for hygienic reasons you should be careful not to invite too many dust mites into your home.

You should be careful to make living conditions more difficult for the house dust mites: So plenty of ventilation, especially mattresses and bedding, so that moisture can escape.

The removal of flakes of skin through regular and thorough vacuuming, cleaning the bedclothes and bedding is a second basic requirement.

If all of this is not possible, it helps to put objects infested by house dust mites outside on a frosty night and to send the roommates in the mattress to freeze to death.

Ants

There are many remedies that help against ants, which we describe in more detail in this article: Natural and inexpensive ant remedies.

As an example, we would like to explain to you at this point how to catch ants with honey:

A flat plate is enough, the bottom of which you brush with honey. Place the plate on an ant trail.

Ants love honey and will march right into honey and get stuck in it. It is sufficient to remove the ants and honey from the plate once a day with boiling water and then to reposition it.

If you have an empty jam jar, it’s even easier: Simply brush the inside with honey, set it up, screw it on with the ants caught in it and throw it away. Works just as well as poisonous ant bait boxes!