Your Guide to Common Household Bugs: Identification, Risks, and Smart Solutions

Living in a bustling city like Chicago, the last thing you need is uninvited guests in your home—especially the creepy, crawly kind. Between work, commuting, and trying to enjoy city life, battling household pests can feel like a never-ending chore. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back with practical advice to keep your space bug-free and serene.

Let’s be honest: bugs in the house give everyone the ick. Whether you’re in a high-rise apartment, a cozy condo, or a classic Chicago home, you’ve likely encountered at least one of these common pests. The key isn’t just to panic, but to understand what you’re dealing with, if it’s harmful, and the most effective way to reclaim your space. A clean home is your first and best defense, and sometimes, the smartest move is to get a little deep cleaning help from the pros.

11 Common Household Pests & How to Handle Them

From the sneaky to the startling, here’s a breakdown of the bugs you might meet, and actionable steps to show them the door for good.

1. Silverfish: The Clutter-Loving Muncher

These speedy, silvery bugs aren’t harmful to you, but they love to feast on starches and proteins in paper, photos, wallpaper paste, and even dry food. They thrive in humid, dark, cluttered areas like basements and bathrooms.

• Fix It: Reduce humidity (keep it below 50%), declutter paper, and seal cracks. Use diatomaceous earth or sticky traps for minor issues.
• Pro Tip: A major infestation is a sign to call a professional. Keeping a regular home cleaning service schedule can eliminate the clutter and crumbs they love.

2. Centipedes: The Hunter You Didn’t Ask For

Their many legs are the stuff of nightmares! Centipedes hunt other bugs, so seeing one often means you have other pests. They love damp, warm spots under sinks or in basements.

• Fix It: You can vacuum them up (run the vacuum extra long!) or use diatomaceous earth. But the real fix is eliminating their food source—your other bug problem.

3. Fruit Flies: The Tiny Kitchen Terror

Almost cute but definitely annoying, fruit flies spread bacteria and multiply rapidly. They’re drawn to ripe fruit, open containers, and garbage.

• Fix It: Store fruit in the fridge, cover all drinks, and take out trash/compost regularly. Make a simple trap with old wine or soda covered in plastic wrap with holes poked in it.

4. Drain Flies: The Bathroom Buzzers

These small, moth-like flies signal a buildup of gunk (biofilm) in your drains. They’re not harmful but can trigger allergies.

• Fix It: Clean your drains monthly! Pour baking soda followed by boiling water or vinegar down the drain. For tough cases, use a drain brush or call a plumber.

5. Carpet Beetles: The Fabric Fiend

The beetles themselves are harmless, but their larvae eat natural fibers like wool, silk, and carpet, causing damage and allergic reactions.

• Fix It: Vacuum carpets and furniture regularly, wash fabrics often, and store off-season clothing in airtight bins. A thorough, professional home cleaning can reach the deep-down debris that attracts them.

6. Moths (Pantry & Clothing): The Silent Destroyers

Pantry moths infest dry goods like flour and pasta. Clothing moths (or rather, their larvae) eat holes in your favorite sweaters and suits.

• Fix It: For pantry moths, discard infested food, clean shelves intensely, and store all dry goods in airtight containers. For clothing moths, launder or dry-clean items, vacuum storage areas meticulously, and use cedar blocks or pheromone traps.

7. Spiders: The Unwelcome Web Designer

Most common house spiders are harmless and even eat other pests. The main issue is their messy webs and egg sacs.

• Fix It: Regularly dust and vacuum corners to remove webs. Use peppermint oil as a deterrent and seal exterior gaps with caulk to keep them outside where they belong.

8. Cockroaches: The Ultimate Unwelcome Guest

These are a serious concern. They carry bacteria like E. coli, trigger asthma, and contaminate food and surfaces.

• Fix It: This requires a full-scale assault. Deep clean your kitchen, store all food in airtight containers, fix moisture leaks, and use gel bait stations. For any sighting, we strongly recommend calling a professional exterminator immediately. A spotless home from a top Chicago cleaning company removes the food and grease that attract them.

9. Ants: The Persistent Picnickers

Common ants contaminate food, while carpenter ants can damage wood structures.

• Fix It: Be fanatical about wiping up crumbs and spills. Use diatomaceous earth around perimeters or pet-safe gel bait traps. For carpenter ants, call a pro right away.

10. Stink Bugs: The Smelly Invader

Harmless but annoying, they stain surfaces and emit a foul odor if crushed.

• Fix It: The best method is to vacuum them up. Seal exterior cracks in the fall before they come looking for warmth.

11. Bed Bugs: The Anxiety-Inducing Hitchhiker

They don’t mean your home is dirty—they are expert hitchhikers from hotels, planes, or used furniture. Their bites cause itching and allergic reactions.

• Fix It: Prevention is key. Inspect secondhand items thoroughly, use mattress encasements, and check hotel beds. If you find them, do not try to handle it yourself. Call a professional exterminator immediately.

Proactive Prevention: Your Best Defense Against Bugs

The common thread with most pests? They’re attracted to moisture, food residue, and clutter. The most effective long-term strategy is a clean, dry, and well-sealed home.

• Declutter Regularly: Bugs love to hide. Less stuff means fewer habitats.
• Control Humidity: Use a dehumidifier in damp areas like basements to deter silverfish and spiders.
• Seal Entry Points: Use caulk to seal cracks around windows, baseboards, and pipes.
• Maintain a Clean Kitchen: Wipe counters, store food securely, and take out the trash daily.
• Invest in Deep Cleaning: Sometimes, you need a reset. A comprehensive cleaning service near me can eliminate the deep-seated grime and crumbs that attract pests, making ongoing maintenance much easier. It’s the simplest way to get your space cleaned and keep it that way.

Living in Chicago is amazing, but sharing your home with pests isn’t. By staying vigilant and maintaining a clean environment, you can enjoy a peaceful, bug-free space. And when life gets too busy, remember that reliable cleaning services in Chicago are just a click away to help you maintain that defense. Ready to schedule a cleaning? We make it easy.

If there’s one thing I think we can universally agree upon, it’s that bugs give us the ick when they’re in our house. And in this video, I want to talk about 11 of the most common household bugs that you are going to encounter in a home, an apartment, or a condo. Basically, if you’ve lived under a roof, you’ve probably shared a space with at least one of these bugs. Today, we’re going to talk about are they harmful to you? Like, do you really have to worry about them? Are they harmful to your space? And of course, the most important, how to get rid of them. I’ll also let you know that I have chapters in this video. You can go to the description and click directly on the bug that you are dealing with if you don’t want to watch this entire thing. And honestly, I’m going to be showing pictures of gross bugs. So, I get it. I’m not going to take it personally. But, let’s figure out how to deal with these pests once and for all. By the way, if you’re new here, if this is your first time clicking on a Clean My Space video, welcome. I’m Melissa Maker. I’m an accidental cleaning expert. Don’t take myself too seriously. Don’t take cleaning too seriously. But I want to help you find the most efficient and effective way to get the job done right the first time. So, if that appeals to you, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel and give this video a thumbs up if you think bugs should just have their own homes and not live in ours. The first bug on our bug menu today is the silverfish. Disgusting. I don’t even know why I felt it was important to print pictures of these bugs, but here we are. This is a silverfish. It looks not like a fish, but if you’ve seen a silverfish in your house, you know that it sort of moves quickly and its backside kind of moves in a different direction than its front side. Now, are silverfish destructive to your health? No. Can they ruin your personal effects? Yes. When silverfish are making their way around their house, they’re looking for starches and proteins. Everything from documents to papers to old family photos to newspapers and cardboard boxes. That’s what they love to eat. They also love wallpaper paste freaks. Clothing like silk and linen and your stored food like dry goods like flour and pasta. So if they get in there, consider that food compromised. Now, how do you know if a silverfish has been in your space? You’ll see sort of these irregular scrapey looking chew marks and some yellow stains. delicious. The reason you’ll find silverfish in your home, well, because your home is lovely, but they also love humidity. They love darkness, and they love clutter. Great reason to declutter in 2026, by the way. So, you’re likely going to find them in your basement, your bathroom, your laundry room, or any space where there’s a buildup of clutter. Now, if you’re noticing you have a lot of silverfish in your home and you want to find ways to reduce the amount of silverfish that you see, the first thing and sort of a lowhanging fruit is to reduce the humidity in your home. It should definitely be below 50%. So, if you have a dehumidifier in your home, make sure that you’re checking what that percentage is and adjust accordingly. Of course, you want to remove any paper clutter and seal any cracks in your baseboards. And then, of course, you can get yourself some dimacious earth and some sticky traps. You can place these in any areas where you notice the bugs. If you notice an intense infestation of silverfish, that’s when I would recommend calling in a professional. Next up, we’re going to deal with centipedes. Oh my god, I don’t even want to look. I’m just going to hold it up cuz they are so hideous. Is it upside down or right side up? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. I got to look at the Oh my god, I don’t even want to touch the paper. They’re so gross. If they do bite, it’s rare. But really, if a centipede is in your house, it’s indicative that you have other bugs in your house because centipedes are hunters. They’re killers. They’re gatherers. They love other bugs. So, on the one hand, we love a centipede cuz it’s doing our dirty work for us. But on the other hand, what you just saw in my physical reaction is how 99% of the people on planet Earth react when they see a centipede, too. You know what centipedes love? They love other bugs, but they also love warm, cozy environments where they can chow down. So, I’m talking under sinks, basements. I know they’re not always warm, but they’re sort of dark and damp. Even a bathroom or a laundry room, that’s very likely where you’re going to find a centipede. So, here’s the deal. If you see centipedes in your home, you have a couple of options. First of all, after you calm down from panicking, you can decide if you want to leave a centipede in your house if you can handle it because it will get rid of the other pests in your house. However, if you, like me, never want to see one of those dinosaur bugs in your house, there are a few ways to get rid of the centipede. If you’re brave enough to touch it, you can smush it or step on it. Or you can take the Melissa Maker approach where I vacuum it up and then I run the vacuum for at least a minute. So, that centipede is so dizzy. I hope that the cyclonic action of the vacuum just puts it out of its misery. Diammacious earth can also be helpful to deal with centipedes. But if you’re seeing a lot of them show up in the house, you’re probably better to call in a professional to deal with the primary pest issue, which is what the centipedes are feeding on instead of trying to go the datmacious earth route. So, next up, we’ve got the humble fruitly. And if we look at it, this is obviously not to scale. The fruitly is almost cute. Like almost cute. It’s even a little furry. So fruit flies are not harmful to humans, but they can spread bacteria. So they’re not ideal to have in our house and we want to get rid of them. The things that they’re going to infest are garbage and compost bins, open wine or juice or pop or kombucha if you’re a big kombucha fan like me, and even fruit and flowers if they’re sitting out on your counter. If you’ve ever experienced a fruitfly infestation, you know how quickly one can become 500. So, as soon as you see a fruitly, you want to deal with it ASAP. Most often, fruit flies come into your house from the grocery store, right? They just hitch a ride on a banana and then make it into your house. If you notice that you have fruit flies in the house, the first thing you want to do is store any of your fruit in the fridge. Then, you want to cover up any open containers. You want to make sure that your garbage and your compost bins are cleaned out regularly so there’s nothing fermenting for them to feed off of. There are many types of traps that you can purchase, like sticky plug-in traps for fruit flies, but you can also make your own traps. And I’ve done this with quite a bit of success. Sometimes I’ll put old wine or old soda into a cup. I’ll cover it with saran wrap, poke a few holes in it, and fruit flies just can’t resist. They go in and they can never come out. Next up, we’ve got the drain fly. And if you see a drain fly in your house, you don’t have to panic necessarily. It’s not going to harm you, but it can trigger allergies. See, a drain fly won’t damage any structure in your home, but it feeds off of bofilm building up in your sink. So, if you see drain flies or little flies flying around your drain, what it means is that you’ve got a buildup of gunk in that sink or the drain trap, and you have to clean it out. Once it’s cleaned out, they have no food. They’ll die. If you don’t deal with this, it can lead to larger plumbing issues and intense odors over time. So drain flies are actually a good visual cue for you to fix a problem that’s festering. So rather than worrying about the bugs, which is the symptom, you’re going to deal with the root cause and you’re going to clean those drains. So you can use a product like green gobbler or you can dump baking soda down your drain and then pour boiling hot water or vinegar down there about 30 minutes later. That’s going to help flush out a lot of that bofilm that’s building up. And frankly, it’s a good idea to do this about once a month just to stay on top of any buildup in your drain. You can also, if you notice this is an ongoing issue, you can get a long drain cleaning brush and you can give it a good scrub with hot soapy water. Now, if you’re still having these bugs come back even after you’ve done this, that’s when you might want to call in a plumber to deal with a deeper issue. Have you seen this guy or girl before? Let me introduce you to the carpet beetle. These are not dangerous per se, but when they shed their hair, it can lead to allergic reactions or rashes. It loves to feed on natural fibers. Everything from carpets to clothing to silks and fine linens and feathers. And it’s not even the carpet beetle that likes that. It’s the larvae, the babies. So, when we’re thinking about this on a microscopic level, we’re all just collectively shuddering cuz this is gross. What you’ll notice if there are carpet beetles in your home, besides the carpet beetles themselves, is shed carpet beetle skin. Yummy. And irregular holes in any of those beautiful fabrics. The best thing you can do to deal with carpet beetles is to vacuum your furniture and your carpets regularly. This is going to lift them up and get rid of them. You also want to make sure you’re washing your fabrics on a regular basis where possible, and that anything that you’re storing longterm, you’re storing in an airtight bin. If you happen to notice widespread damage, that would be a point where you’d want to call in a professional. I genuinely hope you do not find one of these guys or girls in your home. This is a clothing moth and its cousin, the pantry moth. I also hope you don’t find in your home. These two moths are similar in the sense that they’re going to cause a very obnoxious infestation in your house, but they feed on two very different things. Pantry moths are going to be found in your pantry. And while they’re not going to be destructive to your home, like ruining any structural stuff, they will feed on any type of sugar or grain. So any open package of dry goods, you will find a pantry moth in. And they usually come in from the grocery store. Not part of the grocery store’s loyalty program, I’m pretty sure, but once they’re in your house, they can be a real problem to deal with. So what you want to do is get everything out of your pantry. you might have to get rid of everything and then clean very well. And once you replace everything, you want to make sure that you’re using closed, airtight containers so that moths cannot get back in. When it comes to clothing moths, what they like to feed on is, of course, clothing. So, you might find them in closets or drawers or bins or bags. And you’ll notice that they leave holes in there. It’s actually the larvae that are feeding on your clothing uh and ruining them. To deal with these clothing moths, you want to get all of your clothes out of the area that you have the infestation in. You want to inspect everything. You want to launder it on the hottest possible cycle. You can also consider taking your clothing in for dry cleaning. Then you want to make sure that you vacuum the area very, very well to get rid of any of the moths, but also the larvae, which is going to be a problem. You can also scrub very well. This is going to be one of those times where you want to be super thorough. Anytime you’re storing offseason clothing, you want to make sure those are being stored in airtight bins as well. And a great thing that you can place in those bins is some cedar because moths hate cedar. And fun fact, cedar smells amazing. Now, if you see moth traps in the store or online, they also have moth pheromone in them, which means it will attract the moths to them. So, if you have like a deeprooted moth issue, like they’re in the walls or they’re hidden somewhere and you just can’t find the source, the pherommones will drag them out. If you notice, however, that you cannot call this moth issue, that’s when you want to call in the professionals. I have an easier time talking about this one than I did about centipedes, believe it or not, it’s spiders. And we knew we were going to get here. Different spiders are in different parts of the world with different health concerns. I can’t cover all of those. Where I am, they are not generally harmful. Where you are, they might be. So, you have to take different precautions. Now, do spiders damage your home? Not really. But their eggs, their sacks, their webs, they look messy and unsightly. When we’re dusting or we’re looking up high, when we see spiderw webs, that’s a really good sign that your house hasn’t been cleaned in a while. So, if anything, spiders are annoying because they leave all of that mess around. Now, one reason we sort of like spiders is because they like to eat other bugs, too. And to be honest, when I see a spider in my house, I do not reach for the vacuum. Unless it’s a horrifying creature like what I just showed you in the picture, the spider can stay in my house. Absolutely. Have a free meal on me. So, if you see a spider in your home and you don’t want it there anymore, of course, you can use a number of different bug traps and products. Dietmacious Earth is out there. You can spray peppermint uh essential oils in the area where you notice the spiders are. That is a deterrent. It won’t kill them, but it’s a deterrent. You can also vacuum up their webs, their eggs, and their sacks. And make sure that you’re decluttering corners so that they’re not finding their way to a comfortable little spot. And you want to make sure that you’re sealing any gaps using cocking because of course house spiders are coming from the outside. Now, cockroaches are not only completely hideous, but they also carry things like ecoli and salmonella with them, and they can trigger allergies and asthma. Aside from being absolutely terrifying to encounter in your house, they can also have some real health implications. So, if you see them, you want to get rid of them. If you’re eating, just put your food down now, cuz this is going to turn your stomach. A cockroach can contaminate your food, your food prep surfaces, your pet bowls, your toothbrushes, and of course, your cabinets and drawers. They will also leave smear marks, feces, and a strong odor behind. And as if that wasn’t aggressive enough already, they love chewing through things like cardboard, wallpaper paste, book bindings, and packaging. Now, why is a cockroach in your home? Because you’re you and they’re just looking to make your life difficult, but also because they’re looking for warmth and comfort and shelter and grease and food. So, we have to figure out how to make the space that cockroaches are finding in your home very unappealing to them. If you notice a cockroach infestation in your home, or even one, I would consider that an infestation, this is what you need to do. You need to pull out all of your appliances and everything from your kitchen cupboards and drawers. And you have to give your kitchen a deep clean. We’re going to assume that the kitchen is the first place that the cockroaches are going to be. You want to scrub this down with hot soapy water or use some sort of enzymebased cleaner because you don’t want to leave anything behind that the cockroach can feed on. Cockroaches can be very hard to kill. So that’s why you want to make sure that you make this space as clean and pristine as possible. You want to make sure that any food you have is stored in airtight containers. So, no more cereal boxes, no more bags of sugar or flour. Everything has to be in a container. Also, if you have any moisture issues, you want to make sure that you’re fixing those. Bathroom, kitchen sink. You got to seal those up. Otherwise, the cockroaches are going to find their way in. And you can also pick up gel bait stations. They come in a little box like this. They look like little buttons and they’ve got some brown gunky gooey stuff in them. You press them onto an area, a cockroach will find that and you know, let science do the rest. If you have a cockroach infestation and you’re freaking out, I hear you. I feel you. I would be in the same situation that you’re in, completely panicked. Melissa Maker would call in a professional. This is a hard issue to quell on your own, especially if it gets out of control. And now, a cute little critter that we’ve all read some children’s story about, the ant. Now, if you have ants in your home, they are going to look for all sorts of food. And you know this cuz if you’ve seen ants in your house, they are carrying out any crumb or kernel that they can find. And if they can get into the food source, they’re going to contaminate that food source. So, if you have some sort of open container and there’s ants in there, you just got to pitch it. Now, carpenter ants can be a real problem. They’re almost like termites where they can eat through drywall and wood and they can potentially cause structural issues in your home. So, you got to make sure if you have carpenter ants that you deal with them right away. Now, ants can be really tricky to deal with because they are so tiny and so voluminous. They love to hide in all sorts of little places in the house, like, you know, under baseboards, in wall voids, even inside insulation, and in window frames. They are really pesky. Now, there are a number of ways that you can deal with ants on a regular basis, but the best thing to do, as with most bugs, is to try and quell the population as soon as you see them. So, that means vacuuming up crumbs very regularly and making sure that you don’t have anything open that the ants can potentially smell and access. So, I notice that ants really come out in the spring where I live and that’s when I really have to be on my P’s and Q’s about that. You can also sprinkle dietmacous earth around the perimeter of your home like around the baseboards and the window sills and that kind of thing so that ants eat that instead of food and what it does is it sort of kills them so that their population can’t grow and prosper. You can also use gelbait ant traps and this is a very popular option. If you have pets or little kids at home, you can find pet and kids safe versions of this ant poison as well. It is quite effective. So, if you are having issues with ants, set these up. Now, if you find that you have carpenter ants, do not take matters into your own hands. Please call a professional and deal with this. It’s going to save you a lot of money in the long run. The first time I encountered a stink bug was about seven or eight years ago, and I had no idea what it was. I posted a video of it on my Instagram stories, and everyone started to respond to me in my DM saying, “That’s a stink bug. That’s a stink bug. Don’t squish it.” So, here’s the deal with stink bugs. They get their name for a very important reason, but they do not cause any harm to humans. Like, they won’t bite us. They won’t sting us. They don’t really cause us any grief. The big issues with them is that they will leave staining behind wherever they sit. And heaven forbid if you squish one or kill one and have its guts splat everywhere, it’s going to emit a horrible smell. That’s where they get that name from. Now, they come into your house in the fall. They like to seek warmth. They like to be comfortable and cozy. I usually find mine in window sills or on blinds or curtains, which makes them really easy to spot and really easy to vacuum up, which is exactly how I get rid of stink bugs. I just take my vacuum, I introduce the two, problem solved. One other thing you can do is seal any exterior gaps with cocking before the fall hits, and that’s going to prevent them from coming into your house. And here is perhaps the most anxietyinducing household bug of all, the bed bug. Now, are bed bugs harmful to humans? Yes and no. No in the sense that they’re not going to kill you, but yes in the sense that they will bite you. They might cause allergic reactions. They create extreme anxiety. And they also lead to major infestations which can cost a lot of money to deal with. Now, bed bugs won’t damage the structure of your home, but they can cost you a lot of money because anywhere there’s a soft surface like a bed, a pillow, a recliner, a sofa, they are going to burrow in there and wait. They’re going to feed on you and dead skin cells. They are going to shed on there. You will also find little blood spots or stains on there. They require costly treatment and they spread very quickly. So that’s why if you see a bed bug, you’ve got to deal with it immediately. I’m getting itchy even talking about these. Bed bugs don’t come into your house because you’re dirty. Bed bugs are hitchhikers. Let’s say you were at a hotel, on a train, on a plane. If a bed bug found a cozy environment to hitch a ride, even if you bought used furniture on Facebook Marketplace, for goodness sakes, a bed bug could be in there. And that is all it takes to bring it into your house. So, first and foremost, if you’re bringing in anything secondhand, please do a thorough visual inspection. A bed bug is about the size of an apple seed. Now, on a regular basis, you can check seams of your mattress, of your upholstered items to make sure that there aren’t any bed bugs congregating there because that is where they like to be. And in fact, if you ever go to a hotel, you can do a quick bed bug inspection by just lifting up the corner of the mattress, removing the sheets, and making sure you don’t see any dark staining or bugs there. That is cue number one that that place is infested. Next, you can encase your mattress and box spring in a bed bug protection cover. These are easy to find online. They’re effectively mattress protectors, but the fully encased ones will prevent bed bugs from getting in. You can do the same thing for your pillows. And of course, if you’re traveling or you’ve been out somewhere and you’re aware that there’s an infestation, just do a headtotoe check of your clothing. If you’re concerned for any reason that you’ve ported bed bugs from outside in, just take all of your clothes off at the front door, put them in a garbage bag. You can either take them to a laundromat or you can throw them in your washing machine and wash it several times on the highest possible heat to kill those guys. If for whatever reason you have a bed bug infestation in your home, this is not the time to take matters into your own hands. Call in a professional and just let them deal with it as quickly as possible. So, now we’ve covered 11 different types of bugs that you might find in your house, and I want to talk about some of the different bug treatments that you can find in store and online. I know this can be a bit confusing. You might be unsure which one to buy, which one’s right for you, and the difference between something that’s going to kill a bug and something that’s going to prevent a bug. So, I just want to review that really quick. First up is Doommatous Earth. And this is good for any creepy crawly bug. not flying insects, but something specifically with an exoskeleton. What this does is acts like food for a bug to eat. The bug eats it and then this completely dehydrates the bug so it can no longer survive. What you do with dietimmacous earth is you either sprinkle the powder around the border of your home or baseboards or window sills, any areas where you notice infestations. Wait for 24 to 48 hours. the bugs are going to start to eat it and then they will drop dead and they won’t come back. Next up, let’s talk about essential oils. Now, essential oils are not going to kill bugs, but they are going to repel them. The scent of some essential oils that you absolutely love, like peppermint or lavender or cedar, can be absolutely horrifying to certain types of bugs. So, if they smell it, they’re just going to find somewhere else to go. And you know what? That ain’t so bad. If you want to use essential oils, what you can do is mix up one cup of water with a minimum of 20 drops of either peppermint, cedar, or lavender essential oil. And you want to use 100% pure essential oil here and spray it in those areas that are affected or where you’re noticing a lot of those bugs. Once it dries, that scent will be there and it’s just going to turn those bugs away. You can also use sticky traps or pheromone traps. Now, I have a couple of different types here. This one, uh, this is a plug-in sticky trap, and this has been in my kitchen for a while. And what’s really neat about this is you plug it in, it emits a blue light that’s very attractive to things like fruit flies. And then there’s a piece of sticky film on here where the fruitly just flies to the light and can never leave. So, this is pretty useful. If you’re still struggling, you might want to find a sticky trap with pherommones, which will attract or pull out certain bugs that might otherwise be hiding. That way you sort of know what you’re dealing with. Good first step. Then of course you’ve got these gel bait traps. These are like a sticky kind of gel that ants and cockroaches are going to find very appealing, take back to their colonies, consume, and die. This is sort of the gold standard for dealing with these two types of bugs. Particularly, you want to use this because you want them to go through the pain of carrying the gel back to the colony and impressing everyone with their bounty. A spray is only going to get rid of whomever is making their way into your space at that particular time. Whereas a gel is going to make its way back to the colony and wipe it all out. Humidity control is one of the most underrated ways that you can manage pests in your house. Things like centipedes and silverfish and spiders and carpet beetles, they love moisture. So, if you notice that there’s a lot of humidity in your house or you’ve watched this video and then you go and check the humidity level and see that it’s quite high, a dehumidifier might be an incredible investment for you. It’s also just sort of a good flag to look around your house and see if there are any moisture issues or leaks that you can quickly patch up or repair cuz that’s also really going to make a difference. Cocking can make a huge difference, too. If you notice that there are any drafty spots or holes or areas where bugs can sneak in, ants, spiders, shield bugs, etc., a tube of cocking is going to go a really long way. Just keep your eyes open, sort of do a visual sweep around the house with the tube of cocking in hand. Hit that area with a little bit of and see what happens. You will notice a big reduction in bugs. So, what have we learned today? Most indoor bugs are not harmful to you. They might be harmful to your emotional wellness because you might worry about having a centipede crawl on you while you’re in the middle of your sleep or a silverfish making its way into your food and that is totally freaky. But they really aren’t going to harm you, but they might ruin your stuff and they’re unappealing and they’re annoying to deal with. So now we know how to deal with each bug specifically, what products to use, what tools to use, and how to prevent them from making their way into your home in the future. So, I hope this video has really helped to alleviate some of that anxiety, that fear, that discomfort, because that is what we do here at Clean MySpace. We print horrifying pictures of bugs. We do the homework and we figure out the solutions. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, of all of the 11 bugs that I talked about today, which one is the most horrifying to you? I would have to say, my friends, I feel torn between a centipede and a cockroach. I just feel torn. I I don’t know who’s worse. I think they’re both terrible. They both can share the trophy of being the most horrifying and disgusting bug in my eyes. But I’d love to know in the comments down below what is the one that freaks you out the most. Or if you have any bad bug stories, share them here. We can all get a good laugh. If you love the work that we do here at Clean My Space, you can consider supporting me and my very small team by becoming a member. >> >> And if you want to get cleaning tips and product recommendations sent directly to your inbox, like my favorite gel bait traps for ants and cockroaches, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter called The Dirty Dish. And I’ve got a link for that down below. Since a lot of bugs like cluttered, warm environments, you might want to check out this video right over here, which talks about clutter traps and helps you decide if you are falling into them or not. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel.