Pests are a pain in the ###

Tomas Lyngen

Published: 25 Sep 2021

Have you ever lost a night sleep because of flies or mosquitos have entered your home? Getting rid of some pests are easier said than done

You've probably experienced a bug issue at least once in your life, flies and mosquitoes are probably the most common one around the world

I've lost count of how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night, because of a fly disturbing my sleep or worse, mosquitos sucking my blood and my body goes all itchy

Pest types

Flying insects especially flies and mosquitos, are the thing most people fight against at certain times of year. After moving to Asia, where mosquitos might carry deadly diseases such as dengue, you definitely want to protect yourself and your family

Vermin, such as mice and rats is something you definitely don't want in your home, but at rainy season and when winter comes around (in cold countries). These vermin's are more likely to go inside

Crawling insects, such as ants and, silverfish and cockroaches can be quite difficult to get rid of, if they first have nested in your home. Here you want to act quickly if you think some have gotten into your home

When I lived in Norway, cockroaches was something I saw on TV and wasn't common in the area I lived. You could see them at some pets stores, as food for exotic animals and that was about it

After I started backpacking through Asia and eventually moved to Asia, cockroaches became (unfortunately) more common. The big cockroaches are fairly easy to get rid of, while the smaller ones and especially German Cockroaches is near impossible

Proactive

Best way to get rid of bug infestations in your home, is preventative measures before they can build a nest and multiply to much

If you prevent them from creating a nest in the first place, it's also easier to get rid of the few that actually manage to enter your home

It's easy to say after the fact, but still true

Your best weapon to keep most of these pest away, is to ensure you've a clean home. Meaning there's no food, food crumbs or water laying around. So make sure to fix any leaking sink or other plumbing

Remedies

Cockroach hotels

As a preventive and retroactive measure, cockroach hotels are poison traps you place around your home. In area cockroaches are expected to be (kitchen, trash, sinks, etc) or in areas they've been spotet

These traps contain slow working poison that the cockroach eat, then bring back to the nest. While in the nest, the cockroach dies, the other cockroaches feed of the dead cockroach and in return gets infected

Check out our review for a couple options here Baygon 24-Hour Roach Killer and Topone: Cockroach Bait

Bug spray

You get bug spray for most kind of bugs and some crawling pests. Some are designed for just a small selection of pests and other a wide range

From experience, most sprays works fine killing the bugs there and then. But when it come to long time effect (even if some advertise for it), I have not really found any spray that have been good for that portion

For flying insects, I felt most brands and variants tested does a decent job. For crawling insects, especially cockroaches, I found the dedicated sprays for crawling / cockroaches to yield the best result

Glue traps

When it comes to vermin's, I've found glue traps to be one the most effective and easiest to deal with. As you can just place it around the house, move around if it doesn't catch any thing and after it catches something, you can just throw it

You also have glue traps for cockroaches, these I have not had good result with. They catches a few, but not enough to get rid of them. From my resource, these are normally used by professionals to indicate in what areas cockroaches are and then they'll use more heavy stuff when they know in what area the cockroaches actually are