How To Get Rid of Roaches

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

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How To Get Rid of Roaches - 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!

How To Get Rid of Roaches

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 structure of the building structure. 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 cleanliness and hygiene is a good addition to your living.

Step One – Eliminating reasons for roaches being in your home

How To Get Rid of Roaches - Image 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!

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So you have to eliminate as many of the cockroach luring elements as possible. First lock up all your food in airtight Tupperware 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 sanitizing everything with 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 small 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 and I don’t like killing any animal so that is very hard for me to say!

A simple trap can be made by applying double-sided sticky tape to a piece of cardboard. 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 themselves 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 edge with petroleum jelly or cooking oil. Put this trap next to a wall where the cockroaches are known to hang around and hopefully a few of them will come down to the sweet watering holed 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.

As I understand it, 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, that is Boric Acid. It is very cheap, pretty safe for humans (don’t go eating it though) 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