Tips & Tricks To Remove Cockroaches From Your Home

There are fewer things more frustrating and disgusting than having your home feel like it’s being overtaken by the worst of specimens: cockroaches. These pests can be terrifying, dangerous to your health, and oftentimes plain annoying and frustrating to deal with. They’re notoriously hard to kill too, but there are ways to keep your house clean of these pests. 

Bait

Want to feel like an evil mastermind? Leave out bait for the cockroaches to end up killing themselves. Adding ingredients like sugar to things that can be harmful to cockroaches like boric acid or baking soda is a good way to make sure that the roaches eat the bait and kill themselves. 

It’ll also help in cases of a cockroach infestation, since they’ll bring back the food to the nest, thereby spreading the poison to other pests. Baits like these are fast acting, and oftentimes the fastest way to get rid of your roach problem without calling for professional help. These home remedies are easy to make and pretty cheap compared to other options like cockroach traps, repellant sprays, or liquid concrete.

Essential Oils

Using essential oils like lavender, citrus, lime, or rosemary can deter cockroaches, as they find them abhorrent. Spray the oils on surfaces to prevent them from traveling, and spray them on any cockroaches you see as well. It’s a homemade remedy that’s easily accessible and is unlikely to harm any member of your household including children and pets.

Cockroach Traps

Cockroach traps, often referred to as cockroach ‘motels’, use bait to lure out cockroaches into a trap often lined with glue strips to trap them. You can then check these traps for the roaches you’ve acquired, hopefully, a lot. The roaches will get stuck onto the adhesive layer and eventually die. You can note how many cockroaches are caught in each area, so you can identify the problem locations and set out further traps there.

Liquid Concrete and Other Pesticides

There are several types of pesticides available on the market that kill roaches upon contact. They are poisons to the vermin and are easily obtainable at many retail stores. Spray pesticides and roach killers on all surfaces and on any roaches you see, the same as the essential oils, to repel and remove the roaches. Unlike the essential oils, this way of getting the roaches out might indeed be harmful to some members of the household, so proceed carefully and keep children and pets away. However, unlike essential oils, this method is guaranteed to kill them. 

For liquid concrete, follow the instructions on the bottle and spray lightly on cracks and crevices, dark spaces under appliances, and on the edge of your basement and your rooms where the light rarely reaches, as cockroaches like to stay in dark, cool places. This will prevent them from traveling, and they will likely die. 

Diatomaceous Earth

Another easy and cheap remedy, diatomaceous earth is a tried-and-true method of permanently getting rid of cockroaches. It’s an all-natural mineral for soil and dirt, that will kill cockroaches on contact while also not harming other members of your household. It’s still recommended to follow safety rules, but besides that, it’s an easy solution. Simply spread a light layer of this on areas likely for roaches to reside in most, like cool dark places, cracks, crevices, corners, and basement floors. It is fast acting and will get rid of your roach problem rather quickly. 

Keep Your Area Clean

Cockroaches are attracted to areas filled with food that is often left uncleaned or unattended, Cleaning out your area, sealing your food, washing up spills and crumbs, cleaning all your appliances and utensils often, and vacuuming and mopping the floor often are good hygiene practices. Plus they are the way to go if you want to cut off the food supply for your cockroaches. 

Cockroaches are hard to deal with, and they often carry a large amount of diseases with them. They’re also hard to kill, but they’re not immortal. While it may feel like cockroaches can survive the apocalypse, you also have a lot of resources at hand to make that untrue.