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How To Get Rid of Roaches

Posted by Forest in General Articles, Health, Saving Money & Finances

Welcome to Part 4 in our 7 part Cockroach Control on a budget series.

If you have read the other parts before this in the series then I assume you know what roaches you have, how to kill them on sight and are now looking to get to the juice and get rid of roaches from your home!

Getting rid of roaches could be something that takes several months or could go on for the entire time in your home. Especially if you live in an apartment block and they happen to be within the building structure itself. However it does not have to be that difficult or expensive to keep these creatures away and you may even find that the improvement in your cleaniness and hygiene is a goof addition to your living.

Step One – Eliminating reasons for roaches to be in your home

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cockroach_nymph_australia.jpg

Cockroaches generally come into house because they can find warm snuggly places to hide, food on demand and plenty of water. Basically the same reasons we live in houses!

So you have to eliminate as many of the cockroach luring elements as possible. First lock up all your food in airtight tuperware or put it all in the fridge. Make sure all crumbs and remnants of food are cleaned off tables, floors, work surfaces and especially from your bed…. Cockroaches like nothing more than finishing off the crumbs from your midnight snack!

Next I would advise sanitising everything with some kind of anti bacterial liquid such as Dettol Disinfectant. Make sure you get rid of any areas where you may find cockroach poop (which can sometimes look like mouse droppings) and basically wash away all the cockroaches trails and scents. This may help scatter them a little.

Next up lay traps. every dead cockroach is a step in the right direction.

A simple trap can be made by applying double sided sticky tape to a piece of carboard. Then apply a piece of yummy cockroach food in the middle. A piece of potato covered in sugar should work fine! This trap will lure them onto a sticky surface that they cannot remove themselfs from.

Another simple trap can be made by cutting a plastic bottle in half, filling it with a little cola or sugary liquid and then covering the exposed inside egde with petroleum jelly or cooking oil. Put this trap next to a wall where the cockroaches are known to come exist and hopefully a few of them will wander down to get the sweet liquid and not be able to make their way out.

Now you have the trapping under control you need to deal with the nests themselves.

A lot of commercial baits are available but there are some awesome cheap homemade versions available that have worked more than adequately for me.

The baits work quite simply by not killing the cockroach on contact. The roach ingests or gets covered in the bait and then goes back to the nest. When in the nest the roach may walk the bait into the nest where other roaches will get it too. Feed the bait to the baby roaches. Or die from the bait and get eaten by the baby roaches (such lovely creatures!).

My favorite baits utilize the best cockroach killer than I know of which is Boric Acid. It’s very cheap, pretty safe for humans and pets and extremely easy to use. In the next part of the series I will go into the details of using Boric Acid to get rid of roaches in your home.

Cockroach Control- 7 part Series

1. Cockroach Infestation
2. Types of Cockroaches
3. How to Kill Roaches
4. How To Get Rid of Roaches – This Post
5. Boric Acid, Roaches
6. Where to Buy Boric Acid
7. Cockroach Control, Other Tips and Tricks

Tags: getting rid of cockroaches, how to rid cockroaches, killing cockroaches in your home