Ewwwwwwwww. That's what I proclaimed last night as I discovered an earwig cleverly hiding by my cat's food dish. It's not the first one I've found in my tiny apartment and I'm assuming it won't be the last.

But, what can be done about them? I'm someone who avoids harsh chemicals but I also don't want to share my home, bed, whatever else with these pesky critters. Once again, the people on Kalamazoo's Reddit have come through with a natural, homemade trap that appears to be very effective.

The post, made by Reddit user healing_potato_lemon (god, these user names make me chuckle), started off with,

I’ve seen a lot of comments on this sub about the earwigs this year, so I thought I’d share a recipe for natural traps that has actually worked!

The recipe is easy and is made with only two ingredients which most people probably already have in their home:

  • 1 cup cooking oil (the original poster said they used a cheap castor oil)
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce

While they made a large batch, they said you really only need about an inch of the mixture. They did say to make sure you put the mixture in a container that's at least 2 inches taller than the liquid so the earwigs can't get out.

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The success this poster had was impressive and a bit gross. They put various traps within their home but found the most earwigs were, obviously, caught outside:

Here’s where it gets really gross. I put a larger trap on my back deck, one in my front lawn flower bed, one in the fort of my kid’s play set, and one in my garage. When I checked them yesterday morning, the traps were so full that there was no more visible liquid, all densely packed dead earwigs. I can’t even properly estimate how many, but at least several hundred, if not a thousand.

A thousand?? I'm thankful I've only found a few in my general vicinity at home.

A few other tips thanks to healing_potato_lemon:

  1. To-go sauce cups from restaurants work great as tiny earwig traps. Keep the lid and stab a hole in it
  2. Those tiny traps can be used in kitchen drawers and dressers (yes, they had an experience where they found an earwig in their underwear drawer)
  3. Those same traps, with the lids, can be used next to pet's food and water since the lid will prevent the pet from ingesting the mixture.

While healing_potato_lemon didn't upload any photos or video, I did find a youtube video showing a similarly effective method for getting earwigs away from your outdoor plants. Warning: The results are a little icky:

Thinking of relocating to a place that may be free from earwigs? Check out this list of the best beach towns in America to live in:

LOOK: Here are the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

The 100 Best Places to Live in the Midwest

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