By Your best defense against the roach infestation is to eliminate food sources and keep the little buggers out. Here I show you how you can do it.
- Keep things as much clean as possible for you because it does not take much more than a crumb to feed a roach.
- You must wipe down the surfaces after food preparation and clean up spills immediately.
- Don’t forget to clean the places where grease gathers. These areas should be scrubbed clean periodically.
- Store all organic trash in a tightly sealed plastic container and either compost it or dispose of when you throw the other trash outside.
- Keep all your trash cans clean and sealed up tightly.
- If there is dog food or cat food left out, place the bowls in a shallow pan of soapy water, so that the roaches will not be able to get to them. At night stop up the drains in your sink to stop the access for roaches.
Cockroach Breeding Grounds
Cockroaches can fit through cracks as small as 1/5″, so start looking in you areas of infestation for openings to seal them up. They like dark moist areas, so pay close attention to areas near pipes, the oven, refrigerator and inside outlets. Using silicone caulk, fill any opening you can find in the walls or on the floor.
Roach-Proofing the Entryways
Look around outside and clean up piles of the organic waste like leaves. You must not let your lawn grow into a jungle and prune plants and bushes away from the house. In the apartment buildings, roaches travel from one apartment to the next. If your neighbors had a roach infestation and moved out, the roaches will be looking for food and probably reach to your place. They will come in through vents, ducts and drains, so start blocking them. Place screens behind the vents and seal the edges of the duct opening with caulk. Look for damaged screens on the window and for missing weather stripping on doors.
In order to kill the roaches, firstly, you have to seal up any tiny cracks in your home. This means the cracks in your walls, floors, cabinets as well as counter tops. I find the best thing to use for this task is silicone caulk. I personally start in the kitchen as this is the precise spot where the food source is and then move to the bathroom. You don’t forget around the pipes under the kitchen and bathroom cabinets as well as around the base of the toilet.
Next, clean your home really good and make sure you get rid of any extra clutter you have around your living space. When I say clutter, I am talking about the following;
- Boxes
- Papers
- Empty packing
- Clothing laying on the floor
- Trash cans full of trash
- Dishing in the sink
- Counter tops
Roaches are always hiding, so the less clutter you have laying around the house, the less desirable your home will be to live in for these pests.
Remove their supply of both food and water. Clean the kitchen very well, make sure you get all the grease cleaned off the stove and you will need to replace those little drip pans and sit underneath the eyes on the stove. Those things can get pretty nasty. If you have faucets that leak, get them fixed ASAP. You should not leave open soda cans or food contains around the house. If you have a bag of chips that you have opened, put the remaining chips in a zip lock bag or some container that has a lid.
Once you have thoroughly cleaned and sealed the openings in the home, it is time to set a roach killer. You can monitor these roach killers and set what areas of the kitchen, bathroom (or wherever you placed the traps) have heavy activity. The roach traps will also tell you which kind of roach you are dealing with. The most common roaches that are found in households are German and American cockroaches, but it is best to be sure.
Once the traps have been placed and you have monitored them and know exactly which species you are dealing with, it is alright to use roach killing sprays and such to drive them out of your home because you have a better idea of where they are located. Most people, as I have stated before, just go to the store and buy a bunch of stuff and toss it around blindly and true they may kill a few but they will never get rid of cockroaches this way. Most of the time they will spray and bait the wrong areas of the house and the roaches will just walk around it or wait for it to wear off.
