Remove Silverfish From Your Kitchen With 2 Fresh Ingredients

Keeping a kitchen organized and clutter-free is no easy feat. There are a lot of challenges you cannot control — teenagers making sandwiches and leaving a trail of crumbs on the floor and countertop, toddlers getting into the pantry for their favorite Goldfish and spilling them everywhere, drink spills, smudged appliances, and the list goes on. Life happens, but crumbs and damp areas can also attract a common household pest known as silverfish. 

Silverfish are not sustainable bug protein. They are those scaley-looking gray bugs that look like a cross between a shrimp and a centipede. They are more of a nuisance than anything else; however, they can be kept at bay by utilizing fresh mint and thyme. As it turns out, these alien bugs do not like the smell of these aromatic green herbs. Why? Fresh mint and thyme both contain limonene, a terpene whose aroma serves as a survival of the fitness repellant, causing silverfish to stay away as they search for food and water. 

How do you use these natural remedies? While mint is a must to upgrade a store-bought pesto, offering a delicious and refreshing bite to humans, silverfish despise this herb's cooling sensation. If silverfish are a problem in the kitchen, you can keep a couple of mint plants in strategic areas. The same goes for maintaining a thyme plant or two. And there is a nice side benefit to having these herbs in your kitchen. The next time you are making a spring blush negroni cocktail or a mint julep, you will have fresh thyme and mint ready for use.

If you don't have a green thumb and struggle to keep plants alive, there's another option. Use some thyme, peppermint, or spearmint oil spray and mark off a perimeter with it. You know when Gandalf slammed his staff to the ground and uttered, "You shall not pass," that is exactly what this oil spray does with these bugs. The silverfish will be kept far away from your cooking area. However, this is not a one-and-done solution. You will need to reapply your spray at least once a week, and if your kitchen is exceptionally warm, perhaps more frequently as its effectiveness diminishes with heat.