Earwigs in the House: How to Get Rid of Them

You pick a towel up off the bathroom floor, or open the newspaper that sat on the porch overnight, and a brown insect with pincers on its tail scurries off. Earwigs in the house at the end of August are one of the most common calls we get on the South Shore. They are also one of the few pests where we regularly tell people they do not need us.

Here is why they come inside at this time of year, what actually works to get rid of them, and the point where it becomes a job for an exterminator.

Why are there earwigs in the house in late summer?

Earwigs live outdoors. They want three things: moisture, darkness and food, mostly decaying plant matter, aphids and tender seedlings. The mulch against your foundation, the leaves under the hedge, the woodpile, the underside of a flower pot: that is their territory.

Two things push them inside in August and September. First, numbers. The eggs laid in spring have become adults, and there are simply more earwigs around than in June. Second, weather. A few dry weeks bake the mulch and the soil, and earwigs go looking for moisture wherever it is left: the basement, the bathroom, around the patio door, the garage. They slip under a door with a worn sweep, through a foundation crack, around a basement window frame, or inside the fold of a beach towel left out overnight.

They are not moving in. They took a wrong turn.

Are earwigs dangerous?

No. Let us deal with the myth first, because we hear it every week: earwigs do not crawl into ears to lay eggs or bore through the eardrum. The name comes from an old European folk belief and nothing else. There is no documented case behind the story.

The pincers (cerci) are for defence and mating. An earwig pinched between two fingers can nip, and it startles you, but it rarely breaks the skin. It has no venom, does not sting, does not carry disease and does not damage the structure of your home.

Indoors, it is a nuisance insect. It may nibble a houseplant or a piece of fruit on the counter, and it gives off a foul smell when crushed. That is about the extent of it.

Do earwigs breed indoors?

Very little, and that is the best news in this article. The female lays her eggs in a small chamber she digs in damp soil, and she guards them. A typical house does not offer her that. The earwigs you find inside almost always walked in from outdoors, and the ones that get trapped inside dry out and die within days.

That tells you something important: if you are seeing one or two a day, you do not have an infestation. You have an entry point. Close the entry point and the problem ends. The one exception is a basement that is damp all the time, and we come back to that below.

How do you get rid of earwigs yourself?

Here is what actually works, in the order we would walk you through it on site. None of these steps needs a pesticide.

Move moisture away from the foundation

• Pull the mulch back. Leave a 30 to 45 cm strip of gravel, stone or bare soil between the mulch and the foundation. Mulch touching the wall is a damp highway straight to the cracks.
• Check gutters and downspouts. A downspout dumping at the base of the wall keeps the soil soaked exactly where earwigs want to be. Add an extension that carries water 1.5 m or more away.
• Remove the hiding spots. Stacked pots, boards, firewood, dead leaves, the porch mat that never dries. Anything damp and dark against the house.

Close the doors

• Weatherstripping and door sweeps. If you can see daylight under the garage door or the patio door, an earwig walks through without effort.
• Caulk foundation cracks, basement window frames, and the gaps around pipes and cables. A tube of sealant does more work than a can of spray.

Dry out the inside

A dehumidifier in the basement, set to keep humidity under 50 percent, is probably the single most effective tool on this list. It is not only about earwigs: it removes what attracts sowbugs, silverfish and the spiders that settle into basements every fall.

Simple traps that work

• The rolled newspaper. Dampen a newspaper, roll it up and leave it overnight along the outside wall or in a basement corner. In the morning it is full. Drop it in a sealed bag.
• The oil cup. A small margarine tub with a bit of vegetable oil and a drop of soy sauce, sunk into the mulch flush with the ground. They fall in and do not climb out.

Traps do not fix the source, but they show you where earwigs are getting in, and they bring the numbers down while you seal.

Rather have someone look at it with you? Extermination BETA inspects homes in Brossard, Saint-Lambert, Greenfield Park, La Prairie and across the South Shore, and the first inspection is free. Call 514-553-2070 or use the contact page: we will tell you honestly whether a treatment is worth it in your case.

When should you call an exterminator for earwigs?

We will be direct: a good share of the people who call us about earwigs do not need us. Two or three insects a week at the end of August, with mulch piled against the foundation, gets solved with the steps above and a little patience. It settles on its own with the first cold nights.

Where professional treatment makes sense:

• You are collecting dozens, or hundreds, a day. At that volume the outdoor population is huge and sealing alone will not keep up. A perimeter treatment around the foundation, applied by a certified technician holding the Quebec CD pesticide permit, cuts the flow while you fix the yard.
• The basement is damp all the time. Condensation, a musty smell, a dirt-floor crawl space, walls that sweat. Earwigs survive and breed there. In that case treatment is a bandage: the real job is fixing the moisture, and we will say so.
• You have other moisture insects at the same time. Sowbugs, centipedes, silverfish. That is not an earwig problem, it is a damp house problem, and one full inspection beats four separate treatments.

Earwig treatment is part of our residential services, but the inspection comes first. If the answer is a tube of caulking and a dehumidifier, that is what you will hear from us.

Frequently asked questions

Do earwigs really crawl into your ears?

No. It is a legend that goes back centuries. Earwigs look for damp, dark places outdoors, not people. An insect that ends up near an ear is an accident, not an intention, and it can happen with any bug.

Does diatomaceous earth work on earwigs?

Somewhat, and only when dry. A thin line in cracks, along thresholds and behind baseboards dries out insects that cross it. Once it gets wet it does nothing, which makes it weak outdoors and useless in a damp basement.

Will they go away in the fall?

Yes. Adults die with the cold or burrow into the soil for winter, and the ones left in the house dry out within days. The ones you see next spring come out of the ground, not out of your walls. If you are still seeing earwigs in the middle of winter, it is almost always a basement that is too damp.

The sensible approach

Earwigs in the house are a message from your yard: too much moisture against the foundation, a door that does not seal, a crack. Fix those three things and most South Shore homes never see them again.

And if you are scooping them up by the handful, or the basement has smelled damp for months, call. Extermination BETA is based in Brossard and serves Longueuil, Saint-Hubert, Chambly and Greater Montreal. Call 514-553-2070 or write to us through the contact page. The inspection is free, the answer is honest, and your first service is 15 percent off.