We don’t have room for roaches, and neither do you. It’s time to give those freeloading pests the boot with these incredible tips for how to get rid of roaches in your house. Learn how to make traps, set natural deterrents, and navigate your way around the pest control world with sound advice and solid solutions.
Cockroaches are primitive winged insects. Unlike almost every other organism on Earth, cockroaches have changed very little and look almost exactly as they did millions of years ago. There are approximately 4,600 species across the globe. Unfortunately, each variety is just as unsanitary and unwelcome as the next.
Get on board with some natural remedies to get rid of cockroaches inside your home for good. Common varieties you may encounter include the German cockroach, American cockroach, Oriental cockroach, and wood cockroach. They’re all similarly destructive and can spread bacteria and a tell-tale stink through your home. Discover how to keep cockroaches outside the apartment for good without the use of toxic chemicals.
How to Get Rid of Cockroaches Inside Your Home
Getting rid of roaches indoors has never been so easy. Find some of the greatest roach-fighting tips and tricks to mount a home defense against cockroach invaders. Consider making your own roach bait at home to trap and eliminate these harmful pests.
Start With a Tidy Kitchen
Every living organism requires a food source, including the wood roach, German roach, and American roach. For all the fancy chemicals out there, the real roach killer is a lack of viable food resources. The best tips for how to really get rid of German roaches immediately in your house are by removing the pest’s food source.
Cockroaches generally love garbage, grease, pet food, and dirty dishes, which is why a cockroach infestation usually hits the kitchen first. Cockroaches love to hide in dark pantry corners and under appliances where fallen food makes an appealing buffet.
Roaches are nocturnal and love to scavenge while you’re asleep – as if you’ll ever sleep again now. Take steps to eliminate scavenging: seal crackers, pet food, and anything in a flimsy package with easy access points.
Sweep under your appliances regularly, and rearrange the pantry quarterly to help you spot new infestations. Be vigilant, be tidy, and be cockroach free.
Bay Leaves to Deter Cockroaches
A popular home remedy for deterring roach activity in hidden corners of the home involves a humble kitchen ingredient. The bay leaf or laurel leaf comes from the sweet bay tree.
This delicious culinary herb is native to the Mediterranean and is a favorite for marinating and pickling. Cockroaches loathe the aroma – a few strategically placed bundles may be enough to keep the cockroaches at bay.
Bay leaves are easy to track down at the grocery store and are available fresh and dried. To make your own roach deterrent, paperclip a few bay leaves together and add a drop or two of peppermint oil, which roaches find equally unpleasant.
Tuck the bay leaves into vulnerable spaces near appliances, garbage, and food storage. Change them out on a bi-weekly basis. Bay leaves won’t kill cockroaches at home, but they’ll help create an unpleasant barrier around tempting pantry ingredients.
Be cautious using essential oils around pets. Bay leaves naturally contain about 2% essential oil, and peppermint essential oil is toxic to dogs and cats. Keep this in mind when using any edible pest deterrent around curious pets.
How to Kill Cockroaches at Home With Boric Acid
Borax is a compound that comes from several different minerals, depending on what’s available for mining. Until the 1930s, we got Borax almost exclusively from colemanite. However, today, most of the world’s Borax comes from deposits at Searles Lake in southern California.
Is there a difference between Borax and boric acid? Yes, Borax and boric acid are two different versions of the same mineral compound. Borax comes unprocessed from mineral mining, and traditional boric acid is a refined form used in many pesticides and insecticides. Boric acid is available in liquids, tablets, powders, and more.
Boric acid attacks a range of pests, and it’s the best way to kill cockroaches. Boric acid works by absorption; it poisons the bug, affects metabolism, and softens the exoskeleton.
Boric acid is more effective than Borax at cockroach control because it’s more concentrated. The grain is finer and harder for cockroaches to detect, making it easier to bait them into ingesting it.
How to Make a Cockroach Trap
Why pay for roach traps when you can put your own together quickly and with few raw materials? This DIY cockroach trap makes it easy and inexpensive to kill cockroaches at home. It makes a marvelous “set it and forget it” strategy if you are busy or fighting an infestation on multiple fronts.
Cockroaches are lured by the smell of delicious, fatty peanut butter. Mix peanut butter and boric acid to form a poisonous paste, then spread it inside the jar, all along the bottom. You’ll need a sizable glass jar for this cockroach trap – an old pickle jar or sauce jar, as long as it accommodates a good amount of roaches.
Take a bit of petroleum jelly or cooking oil (anything slippery) and coat the inside of the rim; be sure to get the sides. Create slippery surfaces cockroaches can’t escape from. Check the trap daily and empty it directly into the outside garbage or fire pit. For sanitary reasons, don’t fill your kitchen garbage with cockroach corpses.
How to Get Rid of Roaches in Your House
You might be familiar with neem oil from your organic gardening adventures. The active ingredient in pressed neem oil is called azadirachtin, a formidable insecticide.
According to studies conducted, neem oil kills not only young cockroaches but it also stops the adults from laying fully-formed eggs successfully. Cockroach eggs affected by neem don’t generally grow into adult cockroaches.
Powdered neem allows a quick and easy application in hard-to-reach areas. Avoid dealing with complicated liquid mixtures, and pick up a bag of powdered neem. Sprinkle some on a paper plate with some sugar or peanut butter and allow the roaches to make contact with it.
Neem powder isn’t a kill-on-contact method. However, it has far-reaching effects on a cockroach population’s continued lifecycle.
Try a Cockroach Bait Station
One popular method to get rid of cockroaches inside involves clever traps packed with a potent poison. These traps are usually inexpensive and come in multiples for complete coverage across your home. The average bait station contains gel bait, powder, bait, or other appealing cockroach bait that kills in short order.
Pest Control if You Can’t Cope With Cockroaches
Cockroaches are known for their prolific reproduction habits. It seems like you blink, and suddenly, one cockroach becomes a full-blown problem. Conquer a cockroach infestation with help from professionals.
They have the equipment and expertise to rid your home of roach activity and restore order. Plus, the exterminator deals with the dead roaches, and that’s worth its weight in gold.
We hope you enjoyed learning amazing tips about how to get rid of roaches in your house. These stubborn pests are a handful, but you’ve got the skills to send them packing. Place some DIY deterrents around your home if you live in an area prone to cockroaches, such as North Carolina or Florida.
Prevent cockroaches by keeping a clean kitchen and sealing open food like crackers and pet food. Use boric acid instead of Borax for roach control, and always pair it with delicious bait for the best results. Complete cockroach control is within your grasp.
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