There’s one scent in fall we’d rather not experience: stink bugs! If you have them around, you may be wondering how to get rid of stink bugs in your house.

The insects are active March through September, but every autumn especially, they can swarm to houses seeking access to a warm environment in which to overwinter.

Stinkbugs are actually cool looking with their shield shaped hard shell and prehistoric design. However, they’re unwelcome house guests that buzz noisily around as they bump into things. And…yes, they stink!

Stink bugs have a strong smell, unlike any other. Some liken the smell to cilantro in the soapy medicinal quality, however, most people find the fragrance of cilantro pleasant, but somehow, the odor of stink bugs is universally disliked.

Beyond being stinky and noisy, stink bugs can devastate plants, farming operations, and orchards.

The brown marmorated stink bug caused thirty seven million dollars worth of damages to apple crops in a single year, according to the Journal of Integrated Pest Management.^[1]https://academic.oup.com/jipm/article/5/3/A1/2193939?login=true

Luckily, it’s not difficult to naturally prevent stink bugs or remove these stinkers from your home and garden; we’ll show you how.

How to Prevent Stink Bugs from Getting in the House and Garden Plants

4 Stink Bug Prevention Tips

1. ACCESS: Make it difficult for stink bugs to get into your house. 
2. LIGHTS: Don’t attract stinkbugs to your home in the first place.
3. REPELLENTS: Use Natural Repellents.
4. ZAPPER: Hang a Bug Zapper.
5. CLUTTER: Stacks of wood, boards, garden supplies and mulch

ACCESS:

Stink bugs come in through window screens tears, open doors, exhaust fans, wood siding, dryer vents, crawlspaces, and attic entries. They’ll even hitch rides into your home on produce, groceries, line-dried laundry, and firewood.

It will help to keep out stink bugs by repairing screens, keep doors closed (or use screens on them), patch holes, seal your home with caulk, and pay attention to the items you bring into your home. Inspect each piece of laundry before tossing it into your basket. (Good to do for ticks too when coming in from outdoors).

Stink bugs sleep in the bark of firewood, so consider keeping the wood outside, like on the porch, and bring it in when you need it. If the wood immediately goes into the wood stove or fireplace fire from the outside, the stink bugs won’t have a chance to escape into your house.

LIGHTS:

Turn off all exterior lights at night, or replace light bulbs with dimmer, more yellow-hued light bulbs. Sodium vapor lights are another great option.

Indoors, reduce your overnight lighting as much as possible. This helps keep them from attempting to come into your home.

These insects also enjoy a good bowl of fruit and sweet floral landscaping, so try to keep your produce put away, if possible, in your refrigerator, pantry, or in some other container. As for the native plants, ornamental landscaping, and sweet flowers around your home, consider spraying them with soapy water mixtures as needed.

Stink bugs are also attracted to the smell of fellow stink bugs. So Do your best to reduce or eliminate the population so you aren’t inviting even more of them to your space.

REPELLENTS:

• Axe for men works great to keep away from doors (contributed by Jen Theimer)
• Diatomaceous earth
• Neem oil spray
• Essential oils

Diatomaceous Earth

Sprinkle Diatomaceous Earth (DE) powder at all bug entrances, near doors, windows, dryer vents, crawlspace entries, and other areas where the bugs congregate or seem to be getting into your home. DE is made from diatoms, the fossilized remains of tiny sea organism, and is used for all kinds of organic pest control. The rough porous structure destroys the stink bug exoskeletal system which leads to extermination.

Neem Oil

You can also use Neem oil, mixing sixteen ounces of water with every teaspoon of Neem oil. Spray this at all entrances, but be warned, Neem is not a pleasant smell itself.

How To Get Rid Of Stink Bugs With Essential Oils

Another fantastic option, that smells so much better, are essential oils. Mix one drop of essential oil for every one or two ounces of water (depending on your desired scent strength). Spray it at all entry points to deter bugs while making the house smell better.

Highly Effective Essential Oils That Blocked Stink Bug Access

• Clove oil
• Lemongrass oil
• Spearmint oil
• Ylang-ylang oil 
• three-oil blend of:
  • clove
  • lemongrass
  • spearmint

Partially Effective Essential Oils at 60-85% as Stink But Repellents

• Geranium oil
• Pennyroyal oil
• Rosemary oil
• Wintergreen oil

REFERENCE: 2013 Study on essential oils for brown marmorated stink bug repellent.

ZAPPERS:

Remember that stink bugs are attracted to bright lights, and this trait can be used to your advantage. Install a bug zapper indoors or outdoors (yes, there are indoor bug zappers now), in an otherwise dark space and let it go to work.

Bugs die immediately on contact so they never have the chance to release their odors. Bug zappers will also kill a lot of other other pests in the process too.

CLUTTER:

Gardeners need stuff for building out garden beds, trellises and other support systems, so this is a touch one. But any kind of stuff stacked or piled up provides hiding places for stink bugs to seek refuge from the cold.

It’s nearly impossible to eliminate all the possible hiding places for stink bugs, but if you focus on minimizing the number of places you store and stack things, then you reduce the number of places they can hide and hibernate.

Our son found these stink bugs hibernating in leaf mulch around a bush in late fall.

How to Get Rid of Stink Bugs in Your House and Outdoors

Learn from my mistakes and properly remove the stinkbugs from your home carefully, in a way that will not crush or distress them, lest you set off their horrible scents.

1. Catch them with jars or plastic bags. You can carefully lure them into open glass (or plastic) jars, and then set the bugs outside. You can also stick your hand inside a plastic bag, grab the bug, and immediately wrap it with plastic so it can’t leave its foul odor on you or your home.
2. Carefully bump them into a container of soapy water, or spritz them where they are with the detergent mixture.
3. Vacuum stink bugs. I’m only sharing this tip with you because other people say it’s efficient and odor-free. I I have tried this a few times with bagless and bagged vacuum cleaners, and every time, it has resulted in my entire home smelling like I lit a stink bug-infused candle! While this method has not worked for me, you may have better luck with it (and what you did differently to make it work).

How To Get Rid Of Stink Bugs In The Garden

Wondering how to get rid of stink bugs outside? You’re not alone. Researchers have found Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs in forty-seven US states, plus four Canadian provinces. Most people find more issues with stink bugs indoors, but they can also be a significant nuisance in the garden and on farms.

Soap Water Solution for Stink Bugs

• 4 Tablespoons dish soap
• 1 gallon water

The best way to kill stink bugs in the garden is to drown them with soapy water. While you can crush individual bugs, this is a tedious task and will leave you, your clothing, and garden reeking of stink bug.

It’s much simpler to spray all of your plants with a soap water solution. Use four or five tablespoons of dish detergent for every gallon of water. This will not harm plants, and it will not crush the bug’s abdomen, which releases the stench.

Instead, this method will coat the insects with soap, which breaks down the surface membranes of the exoskeleton, so the bug will quickly drown in your homemade, totally safe, insecticidal spray.

While there are several commercial insecticide sprays on the market for stinkbugs and other pests, they may be harmful to people, pets, and plants too. It’s not a wise idea to spray these around your home or on your property, especially on food that you later intend to eat.

If your garden has not yet been overrun by stinkbugs, but you spot one or two in your garden, very carefully pick, or quickly flick the bug into a bucket of water. If you do not startle, stress, or squish the bug, it will not release its scent.

Sometimes, regular maintenance is all you need to keep the stink bug population at bay.

If you have a large infestation, this battery powered garden sprayer works great! We use it for getting rid of aphids naturally as well.

How To Get Rid Of Stink Bugs Home Remedy

The simplest best remedy for removing stink bugs is the same for the garden as it is for in the home, using a soapy solution. Depending on where the bugs are, you might use a soapy spray, or, it may be better to drop them into a bucket of soapy water to keep from soiling your walls indoors, for instance.

Mix four or five tablespoons of liquid dish detergent with every gallon of warm water, mix well, and then spray onto the stink bugs. Alternately, you can flick, place or tap them into the bucket of water.

This remedy is dual-purpose, so you can safely use it inside or outside, without harming you, your pets, or your indoor or outdoor plants.

How To Get Rid Of Stink Bugs With Essential Oils Spray

In a spray bottle, mix one drop of essential oils per every one or two ounces of warm water.

• 1 drop essential oil
• 2 oz warm water

Regularly spray the affected areas of your home where the bugs frequent. Look in warm spaces, and entry points where the stink bugs gain access to your house, like doors, windows, floor trim, dryer vents, attic vents, and crawlspace access points.

Essential oils will not kill stink bugs (diatomaceous earth and detergent will though). Instead, it is a repellent that the insects will avoid if at all possible. They are sensitive to overwhelming scents, because they heavily rely on their sense of smell to locate and communicate with other stinkbugs.

Stinkbugs hate wintergreen and mint-type essential oils, like peppermint and spearmint. These are probably the most effective scents.

Stinkbugs are also known to be repelled by following essential oils.

• clove
• eucalyptus
• geranium oil
• lemon
• lemongrass
• lavender
• rosemary oil

Pick one or two that you enjoy the scent of, and then liberally spray around your home’s interior to tell those stinkbugs to find a new place to live.

Ways to Get Rid of Stink Bugs — Contributions from the Community

In addition, our readers have used these methods:

• Burn them – it’s good to keep a burn barrel for garden maintenance on hand for infested debris, weeds and twigs. The ash can then be added to make organic compost or potash.
• Crush them – many do this; others detest it, in which case there are other a number of other options in this article.
• Cloves – Putting cloves on window sills is reported to deter stink bugs and one reader said it did seem to help
• Natural Predators to stink bugs:
  • Assassin bugs
  • Bats
  • Birds that eat insects
  • Chickens love them
  • Parasitic flies – see organic pest control for the garden
  • Preying Mantis
  • Spiders

How To Get Rid Of Stink Bugs Smell

Stinkbug odors can last three or four hours on your skin, clothing, and in your home. If you don’t want to deal with the stench for that long, try one or a few of these completely safe and natural tricks to get rid of the stink bug smell.

Soap Will Remove Stink Bug Smell

If you have the stink bug scent on your body, use a mild hand or body soap and wash the area. Not only does this liquid smell bad, but it can also be an irritant for your skin that you want to get off of you as soon as possible.

If the bug left any liquid on your wall, windowsill, tabletop, or any other surface, you should quickly wipe the space down with soapy water to limit how long the area will stink.

How to Get Rid of Stink Bug Smell With Essential Oils

Place essential oils in a diffuser, spritz them around the house via a spray bottle, or use my favorite trick and add a few drops to your vacuum cleaner’s bag or bristles to make the entire home smell deliciously clean in an instant.

Start a Stovetop Simmer Pot

Stovetop simmers, or stovetop potpourri, is a great way to add moisture to your home, which is usually helpful in dry falls and winters, while eradicating that awful stink bug scent. You can use these to fill your home with a good scent, using ingredients you likely already have, without the harm of candle paraffins, artificial fragrances, perfumes, or petroleum-based substances.

My personal favorite simmer pot recipe consists of orange slices, apple slices, a few sprigs of fresh cedar, one cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, and a few whole cloves. You can use just about any ingredient that would be used to create an essential oil though.

Fragrant Ingredient Options to Get Rid of Stink Bug Odor

You can always add a few drops of essential oils into the simmer pot, or any of these ingredients that you may have on hand:

• Lemon
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Peppermint
• Vanilla
• Cranberries
• Oregano
• Star anise
• Nutmeg
• Lavender
• Pine
• Pinecones
• Pumpkin spice
• Tea leaves

Consider that aromatherapy can be an inexpensive option any time from your garden to stovetop using fresh garden herbs, and to help eliminate stink bug odor or any odor.