A few years ago I woke up in the middle of the night to discover what looked like a small silver shrimp crawling around on the floor, so I went online to see what it was it was a silverfish . . . And every comment or forum post I saw about them said something along the lines of how hard it is to get rid of silverfish.
I soon found out that getting rid of silverfish is a little annoying if you're trying to do it without an exterminator, but In the end, I realized that I did a much better job than the exterminators would have done, because the methods they use are temporary fixes, and don't address the root causes of the infestation.
When an you call an exterminator out to your place, they show up with a bottle of poison, spray it around your house and charge you three hundred to a thousand dollars. Silverfish are hardy insects a spray of insecticide isn't going to make a difference in the long run.
Most of the time a silverfish infestation can be quelled with a little elbow grease, effort, and awareness. There are some instances that make it nearly impossible to be rid of an infestation, and I'm going to go over them right now.
First, if you have a wood shake roof, wood shake roofs have a tendency to leak, create high levels of humidity in your attic, and the way their made makes it easy for insects like silverfish to enter and exit the house.
Second if you have plumbing issues throughout the house or apartment, an important part of successfully controlling a silverfish infestation is making sure they don't have access to water, so if your pipes are leaking all over, it's just not reasonable to expect the silverfish to go away, the environment is to enticing.
Third, old mobile homes, if you live in an older model mobile home, and you see silverfish, really the only way to not have silverfish anymore, is to move, they probably have made a solid home in the crawl space, and aren't going anywhere, spray insecticides all day and night, it wont do any good, theses old structures are just to perfect.
With that out of the way, a good first step for those of you that own or rent a house, spray the perimeter of your home, the exterior that is, with a good silverfish specific insecticide, as this is how most all pests enter your home. You're going to need a spray canister to apply it, I would ask your friends and or neighbors if they have one you can borrow before you go out an buy one, they cost about 50 dollars new, but you might be able to find one on Craigslist for cheaper.
Next you need to take the fight indoors, but to fight you must first know where to attack right? Yes, The Art Of War (Sun Tzu) applies to all areas of life, even silverfish control. First you will use traps, to locate the "source(s)" of the infestation. Then you will apply insecticide or natural repellants to those areas such as cloves. You must also decrease humidity at the source(s) by use of fans, DRI-Z-AIR, or whatever your dehumidification method of choice. To get the full story on getting rid of a silverfish infestation, please visit my website, silverfishanswes.com, a link to which is provided below.