Common Household Pests: What They Are and How to Get Rid of Them

Not every pest problem requires a phone call to an exterminator. Some of these are $8 fixes. Others need professional treatment. Here's a no-nonsense breakdown of eight pests that people search for constantly but rarely find straight answers about.

Scorpions

Where and Why

If you live in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, or West Texas, scorpions are part of the landscape. The bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus) is the only medically significant species in the US, and it's concentrated in the Sonoran Desert region. Its sting is painful and can cause numbness, tingling, and muscle twitching. Healthy adults recover in 24 to 48 hours, but young children and elderly people sometimes need hospital observation.

How to Find Them

Grab a UV flashlight ($12 on Amazon). Scorpions fluoresce bright blue-green under ultraviolet light. Walk your property after dark and you'll spot every single one. It's oddly satisfying and deeply unsettling at the same time.

What Works

Seal entry points -- scorpions enter through gaps under doors, around pipes, and through weep holes in brick. Cy-Kick aerosol ($20) sprayed into cracks and crevices kills on contact and leaves a residual. Remove rock landscaping and debris piles near the foundation. Professional treatment costs $150 to $300 per visit, with most Phoenix-area companies offering monthly plans around $40 to $50. Not sure how to pick a company? Read our hiring guide.

Silverfish

What They're Telling You

Silverfish are moisture indicators. If you're seeing them regularly, you've got a humidity problem somewhere -- a leaky pipe, poor bathroom ventilation, or a damp basement. Fix the moisture and silverfish populations drop on their own. Moisture control is covered in depth in our pest-proofing guide.

The Fix

Run a dehumidifier in the basement or any room where you see them. Target humidity below 50%. For direct treatment, boric acid powder puffed into cracks along baseboards is old-school and effective. Dekko Silverfish Paks ($8 for a box of 12) are small paper packets laced with boric acid -- toss a few behind bookshelves, in closets, and under bathroom sinks.

Silverfish can't bite you and don't carry disease. They eat starch -- book bindings, wallpaper paste, cardboard, and clothing starch. They live up to eight years, which is a surprisingly long lifespan for something the size of your thumbnail. Professional treatment runs $150 to $250 if you want it, but most people handle silverfish with a dehumidifier and boric acid.

Carpet Beetles

The Actual Problem

Adult carpet beetles are tiny, round, and often speckled. They fly in through open windows and doors and are basically harmless. The larvae are the destructive stage. They're fuzzy, caterpillar-like, and they eat natural fibers: wool sweaters, silk scarves, fur coats, leather, feathers, and even pet hair accumulations under furniture.

If you've found small, irregular holes in wool clothing that look nothing like moth damage (which creates more uniform holes), you've probably got carpet beetle larvae.

Treatment

Vacuum thoroughly and often, especially along baseboards and under furniture where pet hair and lint collect. Dry clean any affected wool or silk items -- the heat kills larvae and eggs. Moth balls work as a deterrent in closed storage (cedar closets, sealed bins) but they smell awful and contain naphthalene, which isn't great to breathe. Cedar blocks are a gentler alternative but less effective.

Professional treatment for a carpet beetle infestation costs $150 to $250. The technician will apply a residual insecticide to carpet edges, closets, and other areas where larvae feed. You'll still need to do the vacuuming and dry cleaning yourself.

Pantry Moths (Indian Meal Moths)

Where They Came From

You didn't leave a window open. They came home from the grocery store. Indian meal moth eggs are present in a surprising percentage of grain products -- flour, rice, oats, cereal, pasta, pet food, bird seed, and dried fruit. The eggs are microscopic and pass through quality control regularly. You bought them without knowing it.

The Only Fix

Throw away every open grain product in your pantry. Every box of cereal, every bag of flour, every open package of rice. This feels wasteful and it is, but there's no way to tell which products are infested and which aren't. Wipe down all pantry shelves with white vinegar.

Going forward, store all grain products in glass or hard plastic containers with tight lids. Mason jars, OXO Pop containers, whatever you've got. If moth eggs are in a sealed bag of flour inside a sealed jar, the larvae hatch, can't get out, and die. Problem contained.

Pantry Pest traps (about $8 for two) use a pheromone lure to attract adult males. They won't solve an infestation, but they're useful for monitoring whether you've eliminated the source. If you're still catching moths two weeks after cleaning out the pantry, you missed something -- check the back of cabinets, pet food bags, and that decorative bag of dried pasta you forgot about.

Stink Bugs

Why They're in Your House

Brown marmorated stink bugs are an invasive species from Asia that showed up in Pennsylvania in the late 1990s and have since spread to most of the eastern US. They don't bite, don't breed indoors, and don't damage your house. They're just looking for a warm spot to overwinter. In fall, they crawl through cracks around windows, door frames, and utility penetrations, then camp out in wall voids until spring.

What to Do

Prevention in early fall is the only effective approach. Seal gaps around windows and doors with caulk. Replace damaged window screens. Cover attic vents with fine mesh. Once they're in the walls, there's no practical chemical treatment -- they're tucked into voids where sprays can't reach.

When they emerge on warm winter days (they wander toward light when confused by temperature), vacuum them up. Don't crush them. The "stink" is a chemical called trans-2-decenal, which smells like cilantro mixed with burnt rubber. Your vacuum might smell for a day.

Fruit Flies

The Source Is Always Something Rotting

Fruit flies don't materialize from thin air, although it sure feels like it. A female lays up to 500 eggs at a time on the surface of fermenting fruit, and the eggs hatch in about 24 hours. That's why you go from zero flies to a cloud of them overnight.

Find the source and remove it. Overripe bananas on the counter. A tomato that rolled behind the bread box. The sludge in the bottom of your recycling bin. A wet mop left in the bucket. Once the breeding site is gone, the adults die off within a week or two.

The Trap That Works

Pour a half inch of apple cider vinegar into a jar. Add two drops of dish soap. The vinegar attracts the flies; the soap breaks the surface tension so they sink and drown instead of landing on the surface and flying away. You'll catch dozens in the first night. This isn't folk wisdom -- it genuinely works every time.

Gnats (Fungus Gnats)

It's Your Houseplants

Those tiny black flies hovering around your potted plants aren't fruit flies. They're fungus gnats, and they breed in moist potting soil. The larvae feed on fungus and decaying organic matter in the top inch of soil. Overwatering creates the perfect conditions for them.

How to Stop Them

Let your soil dry out completely between waterings. Fungus gnat larvae can't survive in dry soil. Yellow sticky traps ($6 for a pack of 20) placed near pots catch adults. For a heavier infestation, sprinkle Mosquito Bits ($10 for a bag) on the soil surface before watering. They contain a bacterium (Bti) that kills gnat larvae in the soil but is harmless to plants, pets, and people.

Some people add a layer of sand or perlite on top of the soil to block adult gnats from laying eggs. It works, but the Mosquito Bits approach is more effective because it kills larvae that are already there.

Drain Flies

What They Look Like

Drain flies are small, fuzzy, moth-like insects that sit on bathroom walls near sinks and showers. They're weak fliers -- they sort of flutter and hop rather than flying in straight lines. They don't bite.

Why They're There

They breed in the biofilm that coats the inside of drain pipes. That slimy layer of bacteria, soap scum, hair, and decomposing organic matter is their nursery. Bleach won't fix it. Pouring bleach down the drain kills some adults but doesn't dissolve the biofilm where the eggs and larvae live. The bleach runs right over the surface.

What Actually Works

Start by pouring a pot of boiling water down the affected drain. This loosens the biofilm. Then apply an enzyme-based drain treatment nightly for seven to ten days. Invade Bio Drain Gel ($15 for a 32oz bottle) is what pest control companies use. The enzymes eat the biofilm that bleach can't dissolve. Squeeze a few ounces down the drain at night when the drain won't be used for several hours.

The flies will be gone within one to two weeks. If they come back, the biofilm has regrown -- repeat the enzyme treatment and consider having the drain professionally snaked to remove buildup that enzyme cleaners can't reach.