Your home is a place everyone likes to view as their fortress against all the unlikable things in the world: rude people, work, and perhaps most importantly, bugs.
Unfortunately, bugs have a knack for getting into your home, and they especially love the garage.
In this article, we’ll be covering a variety of tactics and strategies you can use to eliminate insects in your garage, then keep them out of it for good.
There are many avenues to success when it comes to keeping those creepy crawlies outside where they belong.
If you want to jump down to a particular part of the article, here’s a list (in order of course!) of the main topics we’ll be exploring today:
- Why Do Insects Like Your Garage So Much?
- Clearing Out Existing Squatters
- Keeping New Bugs From Getting In For Good!
Why Do Insects Like Your Garage So Much?
Knowing is half the battle. If you want to keep bugs out of your garage, you need to know why they like getting into your garage so much in the first place.
Well, it’s actually pretty straightforward: bugs want to get into your home for the same reasons you do.
Your house has protection from the elements, food and water, and a controlled temperature environment. Your house is pretty nice, and that’s exactly why bugs want to get in.
Bugs that are sensitive to heat will come inside to cool off when it’s hot. Bugs that are sensitive to cold will come in to warm up when it snows.
If it rains, they will come to you to be dry, and if they are hungry or thirsty and your home offers easy access, they’ll let themselves in. Sometimes, they just want the darkness your home provides.
Now technically, these things can be found anywhere in your home.
But there’s several reasons the garage is likely to have more insect guests than other parts of your house.
- Less Foot Traffic: The garage is a relatively infrequently visited part of the house. This means the area is disturbed less often and bugs have more leeway to set up nests, trails, or whatever else they feel like.
- Less Light: Not including a few weirdos like moths, most bugs don’t actually like to be in the spotlight. The more dark places there are to hide, the better. Spiders aren’t insects, but this clearly goes for them, as it does for roaches and centipedes and such.
- More Clutter: You ever notice how most bugs don’t like to exist out in the open? We’re not saying your garage is dirty, but the garage tends to have more clutter in it than the parts of the house you live in. Such a situation is prime real estate for bugs.
So that’s why bugs like your garage more than other parts of your home.
But how do you keep them out?
Well first, you have to get rid of the ones that already live there.
Clearing Out Existing Squatters
Some bugs, like ants, don’t really plant their flag in your home.
In their case, it’s usually just some scouts looking for food, and you don’t have to worry about an ant colony forming in your garage. Then you have bugs like roaches.
Roaches and bugs like them are true invaders.
They love nothing more than to take a little corner of your home for themselves and start making babies. What’s yours is theirs at that point.
That said, there’s no point in preventing bugs from getting in your garage if you don’t clear out the ones that are already there.
Before you run around spraying Raid at anything that moves, you should take a few steps to make your garage less inviting as you patrol around.
Then you can spray Raid at anything that moves.
Make your garage less desirable for bugs and clear out their favorite hiding spots by doing the following:
- Check under clutter, especially cardboard boxes or clothing, for roaches and other bugs. Objects that can get damp or moldy are especially loved by roaches and should be removed if at all possible.
- If you have any food in the garage, even if it is just pet food, ensure that it is in an airtight container that bugs can’t access. Clear away any food that is exposed to prying antennae.
- Clean out every corner in your garage, including the ceiling corners. Spiders in particular love corners, so watch out for webs!
- Spray insecticide on the inside and outside baseboards of your garage. If you spot any holes that bugs could be using to get inside, fill those up! Caulking works wonders.
- Speaking of caulking, examine all of your garage walls, both inside and outside, for holes. Caulk those things up!
- Peruse your garage for water damage. If you have any leaky pipes or a water heater out there, water damage can put holes and cracks in your walls, and also create mold and mildew that some bugs love. If you have such a problem, solve it!
- If you have any standing water in the garage, get rid of it. Mosquitoes love standing water and lay their eggs in it. This includes puddles, pots with water, random glasses, whatever. Just get rid of it.
Once you’ve done all of that, make a final sweep of your garage with an insecticide spray and blast anything with more than four legs that you don’t want to be there.
Make sure you get rid of all insect bodies as well.
Dead insects are food for living ones, so don’t leave tempting meals lying in a corner of your garage. Throw them outside!
Keeping New Bugs From Getting In
So, your garage is free of the vermin that plagued it in the first place.
Now comes the part where you take preventative measures to keep any more undesirables from getting in.
There are a number of ways you can go about this, most of which we’ll talk about in their own brief subsections here.
Barring Entryways
We touched on this in the previous section, but the first thing you can and should do to keep bugs out of your garage is to literally block their path.
We know it seems like bugs just materialize out of nowhere half the time, but they don’t phase through walls. They need physical pathways to get into your garage.
So, as we said earlier, you should look around all of your walls and baseboards and whatnot and caulk any holes you find that bugs could potentially use to get inside.
Once that’s done, consider a rubber seal or weatherstripping for the bottom of your garage door.
Insects can fit into much smaller spaces than we can, and the few centimeters of space between your garage door and the floor are more than enough for a lot of them.
You can get a rubber seal at a home improvement store, preventing bugs from getting in under your door when it’s closed.
Speaking of which, try not to leave your door open for long periods of time.
Use Traps
Bugs are tenacious little critters, but they aren’t particularly bright.
If you often get a particular type of unwanted guest in your garage, invest in some traps designed for them and place them in spots where those bugs tend to be.
You can place ant bait traps near anthills outside, roach traps near potential entryways or corners, fly traps near the door, etc.
If you have a moth or mosquito problem, you could also consider a bug zapper.
Point is, the more bugs there are in your traps, the less there are roaming freely around your garage!
Keep the Area Clean
This is probably obvious after we spent so much time talking about cleaning your garage out, but you want to maintain that cleanliness in order to keep new bugs from coming in as well.
Keep things from getting damp and moldy, and don’t let debris just sit around. Keep food sealed in an airtight container even if it’s pet food.
Also, be very wary of garbage if you keep that in the garage.
If you have trash cans in the garage, make sure they are always closed, and don’t let garbage build up until it overflows.
Bugs love trash, and if you leave it exposed, they’re going to try their hardest to get into it. So keep it away from them!
Inspect Things Before Storing Them in the Garage
Sometimes bugs don’t even sneak into garages: they are unwittingly brought in by unsuspecting homeowners!
If you ever bring something new into your garage that plans on being there for a while, you should inspect it for pests.
This is especially true for things like cardboard boxes, which bugs already love. It’s also very good practice when getting items from less than trustworthy locations, like the garage of someone else.
You don’t know if they keep it as clean as yours!
Point is, the last thing you want is to bring a box of clothes into your garage, completely unaware that there’s silverfish or roaches living inside of it or something.
A lot of good all that work you did will be if you accidentally Trojan Horse yourself!
Leave the Lights On
This preventative measure might be a little less feasible if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like leaving things on when they aren’t being ‘used.’ But as we said earlier, many bugs really love darkness.
How often do you see roaches scuttling around in broad daylight without care?
So, while it may run up your electric bill just a teeny tiny bit, consider keeping your garage lit as much as possible. Bugs often want to make their home in damp, dark places.
A dry, well-lit garage is much less inviting for them!
Conclusion
Ultimately, there are many things you can do to keep bugs out of your garage. But of everything we talked about, here’s the ones you need to remember and employ the most!
- Clean your garage! Bugs love dirty places. Don’t leave food, water, clutter, or trash exposed! Once your garage is clean, keep it that way!
- Shore up any holes or entryways bugs can use. That includes holes in the walls and adding weatherstripping or a rubber seal to doors and windows.
- Place traps around the garage to catch as many pests as possible.
If you forget everything else, at least remember these very important tips to keep bugs out of your garage from now on.
Alright, that’s it for this article, here’s a few hand selected articles that you might also find interesting reads:
How To Keep Bugs Out Your Tent – 7 Proven Strategies
How to Keep Insects out of Your Porch! Easy Steps
Is Pest Control Necessary? My Experience and Conclusion
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