Crickets are lovely to listen to on summer evenings — when they're outdoors. When crickets are indoors, they can be harmful pests, because they will eat nearly anything, including wool, silk, linen, cotton, other fabrics, human food, wood, wallpaper, or almost anything else found inside your home. This raises the question of how to get rid of crickets. Because a single female cricket can lay several hundred eggs and each egg takes nearly a year to hatch, it is extremely difficult to detect an oncoming onslaught of crickets.

There are, however, some steps that you can take in order to prevent a cricket invasion or get rid of crickets that already live indoors. First, you should seal all cracks in the walls and foundation of your house — crickets can squeeze through very small openings. You should also trim all grass growing close to your house, as tall grasses provide ideal cricket habitats. Cleaning up all garden debris and grass clippings is also helpful, because crickets like to live in moist decaying vegetation. Ideally, all vegetation should be at least 12 inches (30.48 cm) away from the house.

It is also a good idea to keep all garbage containers sealed and away from your home. Rain gutters should be cleaned out regularly, because the moisture and leaves trapped inside them attract crickets. Turning off outdoor lights at night or switching to dimmer yellow lights may also help you get rid of crickets, as they are attracted to bright lights. Since basements are ideal habitats for crickets, be sure to rid this area of clutter for them to hide in.

If prevention fails, there are some traps and poisoned bait available to get rid of crickets. You can even make an inexpensive and effective cricket trap to get rid of crickets by mixing water and molasses in a jar and placing it in an area where crickets have been found. The crickets will climb into the jar to eat the molasses, but will drown in the water. An alternative and offbeat way to get rid of crickets is to allow a cricket-eating animal such as a frog, lizard, or cricket-enthusiastic cat to roam your house and eat crickets as they appear. It is also advisable to either kill or humanely remove any remaining crickets from the interior of your home — remember, they breed prolifically!