Anyone else have these crawling into your kitchen?

My living room had an infestation of ants after I planted Shasta daisies nearby in the garden. I found their nests underneath the roots. When the plants were removed they left.

Ladybirds...hundreds of them...have put tea tree oil round the window frames ...hope that works.

I often find woodlice in the kitchen but then in good weather the door is open so that the dog can go in and out. I don't squash either and yesterday swept one up and put it outside where it landed on its back with little legs waving about. I must be a softie because I then had to go out and flip it the right way up!
The thing I can't stand is when flies get in and I'm afraid I do kill them off if I can.

Made me laugh Hooty, I have the same problem even though mine are in their 30s now, when they come to stay...which is often!.

I never kill anything if I can avoid it and all of my children are the same. We all seem to keep a plastic container and a piece of card under the kitchen sink to trap the invaders. Even at the caravan where there are LOTS, which keeps us out of mischief and off the streets

Ants are our problem. The nests are in the house foundations and I find that if I spray their access point (usually window frame) with ant killer spray that comes in a red spray bottle (different makes but the bottles always look the same!) they don't come in again. They usually all come in a line like a little army. The nests, identified by a pile of very fine soil, are always in the same places, and show up every spring no matter what I do. Apparently ants were the first things to appear after Hiroshima.

I remember in the 50's (we didn't have a fridge) finding woodlice in our larder, which was wooden.
My problem now is slugs, it's improved since I had a new kitchen installed several years ago, but they now seem to have reappeared. In the morning, I find 'a trail' over the wooden draining board, I think they must come up the overflow - if anyone has any non-killing remedies - I would be very interested!

I dislike killing most of the 'harmless' house invaders; I usher out spiders, bees & even wasps but I'm afraid that flies and mice get the poison treatment. Also, slug pellets in places inaccessible to the cats and the dog.

I'm ambivalent about the poor old ants, harmless but not at all welcome. We had them nesting at the base of our stone walls. The bait traps were the most effective at getting rid of them and much cleaner than trails of ant powder all over the place. Just about all hardware stores sell them.

For some reason a friend of mine always called wood lice Charlie pigs and this has stuck in our family. The other day my 2 year old granddaughter went into the bathroom and screamed because there was a wood louse in there. Without thinking I said 'Its only a Charlie pig'. When he picked her up later, her daddy was very surprised to hear that Granny had a guinea pig in the bathroom!

Wood lice only live where there is damp.
Don't know what their purpose is tho.

Do slugs have any purpose, I wonder?

We had them in our living room, of all places, for ages. We had no idea where they came from and they withstood everything we put down to see them off.

The did go, eventually, but we still had no idea from whence they came, or why.
It can't have been much fun for them, slithering about on our wool carpet.

When we used to live in Whaley Bridge, there were huge black slugs that used to come into our lean-to porch at night and pick the cats feeding bowls clean of any leftovers. If one of us stepped out there in the dark we sometimes accidentally trod on one of these monsters (apparently they can grow to 12cm/almost 5" but we never saw any that big, thank heavens!) and they went with a loud crack! Yuck! We never meant to harm them but, being black, they were tricky to see in the dark ?

The biggest UK slug is the ashy-grey slug which can grow to 25cm/10"!!! That's enormous! Luckily it prefers to live in woodland or our gardens would be bare soil! ?

When I was a child in Oxfordshire they were known there as guinea pigs, so your grand-daughter would have been correct then. As I understand it they feed on decayed wood so I view them as miniature cleaning staff (but still 'help' them out of the house if I come across one).

Sorry should have directed my message to Coppernob.

we had slugs in the kitchen for years and years, but since i have hidden bay leafs all over the place they seem to have stopped, also put down used coffee pods from tassimo. yes i try anything to keep the horrible things out. i hated it when you came for a drink of water at night and stood on one................

Aaaaargh, marmar01

If my copper tape hadn't stopped the march of the monster slugs, I was going to try leaving a nightlight on in the kitchen. Apparently they like the dark.

We live in a cottage in a rural area and woodlice have always been our house companions.

We even had slugs come up through the floor once - thankfully no more!

I read somewhere once thst wood lice are very good parents so I've always liked them.

I keep finding them upstairs in my bedroom and climbing up the stairs - I'm not quite sure if they've managed to get all the way up there on their own of if they're different ones!

Very many years ago when my youngest son was a toddler we bought a bungalow and before we moved in I had to wait there for the gas man to come and read the meter. My little boy said Mummy what are these and when I looked the brown shag pile carpet was covered with woodlice! There was no furniture in there so we had to stand on the hearth for an hour before a lovely lady over the road came over and asked if we wanted to go over to her house for a drink. We never did manage to get rid of them all despite finding a nest under the step in the hall!

I sometimes had a slug in my kitchen. Now I scatter a line of salt around where I think they might be coming from. They can't cross it.

I don't have ants but I believe that talcum powder sprinkled over doorways is effective also paraffin (if you can still buy it) just wiped across wherever they seem to come in will stop them. Slugs are my particular nightmare, but I have been told that their presence is evidence of damp. Like a previous poster who can't see the point of wood lice, I can't understand the existence of slugs and my other arch enemy the black vine weevil, yuuuk

I have a few very small black creepy things that try to live between the pages of my cookery books and in the pan cupboard, occasionally in the knife drawer. I noticed them in a holiday house we rented too. Any idea what they are? Let's be thankful we don't get the cockroaches endemic in countries with hot climates.

MIL is infested with woodlice and recently we found one in the kitchen after her weekly visit (don't know if she brought it as an extra visitor). Slugs are our own bugbear (over the winter months we find up to 4 having a party in our kitchen) - they have to be coming under the washing machine - can't see any other way in!) and they are obviously practising for the slug olympics, as they climb up cupboards, and when we put them outside the front door they pick themselves up and race round trying to be the first one back the following morning. I hate moths and butterflies and that is for DS to deal with.

Jaxie, are these things like little black rods, very small?

If so, I had them in my kitchen drawers and nothing would shift the things until I contacted the council. The guy told me what to use to get rid of them (sorry, forgotten what he said, it was years ago) and he asked me to put some into a box for him to take to some women's meeting where he was giving a talk on various creatures.

Yes, Phizz, they are the ones. I wish you could let me know how to get rid of them.