With the spring past us and warmer weather starting to be a more regular thing, our house is seeing more "natural" activity inside of it with some bugs and insects joining our little family. We've regularly had some slight issues with controlling pest ants on occasion so those are kind of normal, this season we've noticed more earwigs around our house. Not really sure how they got introduced recently, but they freak my kids and wife out a little bit when they see them. The other insect that to me that looks like something out of a sci-fi novel or movie, just at a smaller scale is the common house centipede, shown in the image to the right. After reading up more about them I've discovered that as ghastly as they may appear, these guys are actually pretty helpful. In fact, the proliferation of them in our home could be due to the abundance of other insects that they feed upon. Where there's a food source, there will be wildlife (this usually works with humans too!). Those who discovered mice infestations in their homes may hire a mice pest control company that can provide professional rat control services to help get rid of these pests before they cause any further damage.
My challenge is that I'm trying to balance our family's new desire to avoid unnecessary chemicals and food additives with not having to feel like our house is becoming an entymology experiment gone awry.
Right now, my biggest irritation is probably the ants we have in our house. We live on a slab foundation and there are a couple of areas in the utility closet where the ants are apparently chewing through concrete as I can see piles of their "rubble" around certain areas. I decided to call ant control services like carpenter ant control and have them help me with this, for a more permanent solution.
I'm thinking I should probably take some measures outside my house as well. I've been looking at some professional pest control services just to check on prices, but again, trying to balance the amount of strong chemicals that are required to be used.
What's been your experience with controlling insects in your house? Do you try and go with a natural solution and just manage the "food" availability issue for the bugs you're battling? Or, do you just hire professional exterminator to take care of everything for you?