Growing up I have no recollection of any vermin in the house at all - we lived near the coast in the North West. (Hence not ticking any of those boxes in the poll). Our house was 60 years old.
We have occasionally had mites in the flour - here that's not a sign of bad housekeeping so much as getting a bad batch of flour.
I went to University in London. There you are apparently no more than a few feet from a rat at any given point (I never saw any, just Tube Mice - mice who live in the London Underground train system.) One year, we did have a cockroach problem (which freaks me out). That was an 150 year old house converted into flats. We were assiduous housekeepers, but the students living in the other flats weren't necessarily as good, and the cheap landlady refused to have the entire house done. We could only get our flat done, but not stairwells or other flats, so the roaches would just go to one of those areas meanwhile. Bear in mind that British roaches are small, and the Chinese roach traps we had (courtesy of our flatmate's Hong Kong based mother) were more than a match for them.
When living somewhere in suburbia, I have had an ant problem in the front garden which then found ingress to the house and kitchen; as the ants were living outside, treating the entry ways kept them at bay.
In my current house (12 years old, suburbia), I haven't had a problem, hence not filling in that part of the poll.
I have heard of the following problems/infestations occurring in the UK; fleas (usually due to pets), wasps nests, clothes moths, woodlice, mice (usually in more rural areas, single mice usually due to cat presents), ants, slugs, roaches, squirrels in the roof space, bedlice (the biting kind). They do seem to attack the older houses, especially the less well maintained ones where cheap landlords prevail in absentia.
no subject
Growing up I have no recollection of any vermin in the house at all - we lived near the coast in the North West. (Hence not ticking any of those boxes in the poll). Our house was 60 years old.
We have occasionally had mites in the flour - here that's not a sign of bad housekeeping so much as getting a bad batch of flour.
I went to University in London. There you are apparently no more than a few feet from a rat at any given point (I never saw any, just Tube Mice - mice who live in the London Underground train system.) One year, we did have a cockroach problem (which freaks me out). That was an 150 year old house converted into flats. We were assiduous housekeepers, but the students living in the other flats weren't necessarily as good, and the cheap landlady refused to have the entire house done. We could only get our flat done, but not stairwells or other flats, so the roaches would just go to one of those areas meanwhile. Bear in mind that British roaches are small, and the Chinese roach traps we had (courtesy of our flatmate's Hong Kong based mother) were more than a match for them.
When living somewhere in suburbia, I have had an ant problem in the front garden which then found ingress to the house and kitchen; as the ants were living outside, treating the entry ways kept them at bay.
In my current house (12 years old, suburbia), I haven't had a problem, hence not filling in that part of the poll.
I have heard of the following problems/infestations occurring in the UK; fleas (usually due to pets), wasps nests, clothes moths, woodlice, mice (usually in more rural areas, single mice usually due to cat presents), ants, slugs, roaches, squirrels in the roof space, bedlice (the biting kind). They do seem to attack the older houses, especially the less well maintained ones where cheap landlords prevail in absentia.