I have 450 sq ft that’s on the ground floor. Like almost 0 elevation at all from street level. 100 year old building. I live a 10 minutes walk away from the Pacific Coast, SF climate
Every time I wake up and go to the bathroom, I see 2-5 insects in it. 1-2 are cockroaches, rest are some other small thing. Flies maybe? Always see some cockroach droppings on sink counter that I have to spray and wipe down
Every time I leave a room dark for a few hours and turn on the lights, I always see 1-3 insects
During the day with lights on, I notice 1-4 insects per hour in various places excluding tiny fruit flies. Those I probably see like 5 times a day
Problem has been getting worse since I’ve moved in but this is also the first summer I’ve lived through in this place
And if I need pest control, how much work is it to have them come in? Should I just move apartments if I need them?
Depends on what kind of bugs! For some kinds of bugs, having 200k of them in my apartment would make me quite happy.
There are lots of different levels of cockroach activity. If you’ve ever been in a place that’s had an out-of-control roach infestation for a while, you’ll be familiar with the smell- not just of the bodies but the frass (looks like coarse ashy black dust) too. If you can smell it then there’s a major problem. If you can’t smell or see it then it may be at an okay level.
If you frequently wake up with bugs, try sleeping on an air mattress or something, in sheets and clothes that have all been washed and kept sterile, on a section of the floor that you’ve blocked off with diatomaceous earth in every direction. If the bites don’t happen in a few nights of that, then you have a crawling bloodsucking insect problem.
The biggest issue is food and habitat. Every indoor environment is an ecosystem. If it makes sense for their populations to live there, they’re going to, and any pest control is going to be an uphill battle.
Cockroaches like dark damp places, so if you have any leaks, they’ll flock to those. If you have any standing water they will find it. If there’s a leak in the walls of a stick-frame construction, the damp plywood can harbor them basically indefinitely. You can make your own traps with smooth enough conic-section 32oz soup containers: leave the lid on, cut the bottom off, oil the inside rim, place it upside down with bait on the lid. There are lots of pest control products for roaches. Don’t get the endocrine inhibitors, it won’t satisfactorily solve your problem; you want the straight killers like emamectin.
Flies like rotting and fermenting stuff. They’ll land on it, but if it’s all liquid, like a jar with vinegar sugar water, they’ll drown in it. This control measure can be combined with fly strips which are pretty cheap.
Moths like tight fibrous things, especially with a carbohydrate source, even more so if that source is damp or humid. Many of them will go away if you have one of those UV bug zapper bulbs/lights.
General stuff to keep a lot of pests out includes limiting the humidity, keeping all kitchen waste in a sealed container, keeping all carpets vacuumed and all smooth floors mopped, not leaving doors open, and making sure all window screens are intact and cracks are sealed. Unfortunately in most conventional housing, every seam has cracks and many aren’t reachable.
Some things like spiders will curb the population of other arthropods. Centipedes will too, but they make most people (myself included) squeamish.
I might have to try that cockroach trap. I tend to have issues with them whenever it’s warm where I live.
I do a similar trap to your one for flies to deal with occasional fruit flies, but for some reason I add a few drops of liquid dish soap to it? I have no idea why I do this (maybe it helps get the flies stuck better) but it works well enough when I need it.
2 days ago I talked to a guy who said he just uses smooth plastic bottles for those roach traps, with some water inside and maybe something that smells like food.
A lot of online how-tos recommend the drop of dish soap. I personally never got it to work, I think it blocked the smell of the vinegar and flies didn’t even come close. When I tried the vinegar on its own, they flew right in and drowned in it.