We Have To Talk About Cockroaches

Nobody wants to admit it when they have roaches in their home. Can’t really blame them, but it means NOBODY talks about what works, and what does not.

We have NEVER had cockroaches in our home. Well… One. Once. Seriously. Just one. We killed it. Never saw another. I think it came in on clothing that someone gave my kids.

But roaches in our home? It NEVER happened. We never lived where they were THAT kind of problem, and we never were so dirty that roaches loved us.

We moved. Right into the middle of the US. We’ve lived in this time zone before, further south, and didn’t have roaches then.

But this house has them. We are staying with someone else for a while, and they have roaches. Terribly bad. But getting better.

Once you have them, and they are well entrenched, it is a different thing than having just one. Or even two (they breed, you know, even roaches can apparently attract something to copulate with). There are hundreds here. In the corners, in the cupboards, under furniture, IN furniture, in the drawers, in the sink, even in the fridge and pantry.

EEEEEYYOOOOOO!

They have fought them. They listened to ALL the ads. And since nobody talks about roaches, they have been at the mercy of advertisers, without much else to help them deal with these. The homeowner researches well, but the web is skewed. He gets articles by makers of traps and poisons. And most of them lie.

He used bombs. Tomcat bombs. They were useless. Other bombs can work, but they leave a lot of residue that is very harmful to people and pets.

He used insect spray. They laughed.

He used a different insect spray. You can smell it. Cockroaches like it. We don’t know if it works or not.

He used traps. White ones. They barely work. He set out black ones instead.

We added more black traps. The big ones, and the small ones. They work, but slowly and indifferently. You can tell that they work because they leave dead bugs everywhere. On the counters, on the floors, in things, under things. Deal with it, dead roaches don’t breed.

We added sticky traps. They work. The roaches like them IF you fold up the trap into a box. Don’t use the ones that only lay flat, that is for mice (and if they have enough glue on them, they DO work for mice, you just lay them where you see mouse trails). Mice don’t like traps, they won’t go in if you fold them up. But roaches like the dark, so they go into boxed traps. The more roaches you have in there, the more likely they are to go in, because they congregate in dark places.

Now those sticky traps are THE THING to catch roaches. You don’t just have to let them sit there and HOPE they’ll get one, you can use them to go hunting!

Turn it up like a stovepipe. Put it over the roach. Wait 5-20 minutes, and the roach will have gotten bored and tried to climb. HA! Sticks to be him! (That was a little joke there in case you didn’t notice.)

So now you have a trap that is all wrong. Sitting there waiting for the ONE roach you caught to get stuck. Only you CAN catch more. Just SLIDE that puppy over the surface (counter, table, whatever), and when you see another one, TIP it and catch the next roach. As long as you SLIDE to the right, and TIP the right side (or the opposite), the roaches already caught will be on the side that is still anchored to the surface, and they won’t have time to run out.

I had a busy morning a few days ago and caught EIGHT small roaches in just a minute, using a single boxed sticky trap. You have to be fast, it is harder to catch big ones than little ones, they just run faster.

So the thing is, roaches do not like the light. So another thing you can do is keep LIGHT in your house. Open curtains in the morning, or use lightweight and light colored drapes that let sunlight in. This really reduces the roaches.

Put a lid on your kitchen garbage. Roaches LOVE garbage. They breed there.

On the one hand, we say, don’t leave a lot of food in the garbage. At least not for long. It is a nice trick to clean out the fridge and leave it overnight in an open garbage, and then bundle it all up and tie it off in the morning. As long as you don’t have mice… Because this can attract roaches into it, and then you throw them away.

But leaving food garbage forever in the corner of your kitchen is a bad idea.

You also want to keep the garbage with food in a SINGLE place in the house. Don’t put food in other garbage cans, it multiplies the problems.

Now, when you fight roaches they will diminish, and then bloom again. Damp weather just brings them out. They love to infest your house on humid days.

When they explode again, they will be BABIES. Little tiny bugs crawling everywhere. Take them seriously, they become BIG bugs crawling everywhere. Go hunting with that sticky trap. WIN!

They love heat. They’ll be a worse problem (with BIGGER roaches) in warm weather, and hot climates. Nuthin you can do about it, but fight them.

They eat all the food. Don’t leave food out. Put it away right after meals.

Wash the dishes promptly. Don’t leave them overnight. RINSE them before you leave them on the counter to wash later. We just don’t leave food on them to feed nasty bugs.

If you buy Pasta in boxes, or other foods that are only contained in paper, WRAP THEM UP or BOX THEM UP in plastic bags or totes, or canisters. Make sure the roaches can’t eat it before you do.

Since they like dark corners, reduce the number of dark corners in your house. ESPECIALLY near sinks, or anywhere else that is likely to attract moisture or grunge.

Don’t leave your sink drain baskets on the counter, either put them under the sink somewhere, or leave them in the drain. Roaches love them, they provide a nice sheltered place to breed and hide.

I am assured you CAN win. But that you rarely do. There’s just so much they can feed on.

I am also told that they are a constant problem where they can live outside. That it is not as difficult to win if you are in a northern state.

Insect and mouse poisons and traps seem to get LESS effective every year. My mother’s dog ate TWO rat poison bricks, and didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Now I think that’s a problem. Shoulda KILLED her. The mice and rats just eat it and go right on messing up the house.

Additional Strategies that I have learned…

Don’t give them anywhere to breed that can be eliminated.

I don’t have a utensil jar on my counter, they love them.

Every single thing you put on the counter has space UNDER it for them to breed. So we must be careful what we put there, and whether we really need it or whether we can eliminate the dark spaces underneath.

Every dirty dish is also an invitation. Sigh. We struggle so with dishes. Like sweeping ants, they just crawl back onto the counter with same dirt on them every day, right?

So RINSE your dishes, and stack them neatly, and WASH them at least once daily. No guilt over just once. Life demands, and most of us cannot wash dishes after every meal.

Use the dishwasher to hold the dirties if you can. Just rinse and put right in, and close it. No roaches there. This does require some management though, you MUST empty it as soon as it is done, or no later than the following morning. Otherwise you run out of room for the clean and dirty both.

Don’t have a dishrack with hiding space under it. We have the classic Rubbermaid rack and drainer. I am switching to a double decker elevated rack with removable drainer trays, that is light in color and reflects light under it. Less opportunity for roaches to hide and breed there. The old Rubbermaid has a drainer with lots of hiding space in a configuration that they love. You CAN get one of those in clear plastic, but it is frosted on the surface, instead of really transparent, so it does not repel them fully.

Don’t leave grease and dirt in the sink either. Just hose it down with hot water if you cannot do anything else.

The sink here is also a problem, it is a recessed sink, with no flange over the top. The countertop is an inch and a half thick, and the sink is mounted below that. There is a nice pocket there between the two (curved V shaped), and the roaches run in and out of that like it was made to be their apartment dwelling. If you have things like this, use clear silicone caulk to fill the gap, so they have no room to hide.

If you have a Trash Compactor, you save a lot on dumpster space, but OH, the cost. Compactors USED to be sealed, behind, under, on top, beside, and they had a rubber gasket on the door. They aren’t anymore, and you have this great big roach breeder that churns out new generations of roaches and feeds them all, with lots of dark hidey holes so they never get completely caught. If you can’t seal it, you need to spray inside that cabinet regularly, and put some traps or bait in behind.

(Statistically, according to Orkin, homes with Trash Compactors have both HIGHER AND LOWER roach rates. How is this? They recently divided their results, and found upon further research that the LOWER rates were for SEALED cabinet Trash Compactors, and the HIGHER rates were for Unsealed cabinets. The difference is astonishing. Sealed cabinets have less than HALF the rate of roach infestation in the entire home. Unsealed Trash Compactors have more than THREE TIMES the rate of roach infestation. Further, infestations where there are Unsealed Trash Compactors are more intractible, and are almost impossible to eradicate.)

It can help to put a bug bomb inside the Compactor and bomb it with the door closed, but as long as the access to food is not stopped, the beasts will continue to multiply in the food zone.

So this leads us to garbage cans. Two major issues:

First, keep it closed. Get one that is sufficiently sealed that roaches cannot come and go at will, and then keep it shut when not putting things in. Ok, so I get it, this is REALLY HARD with kids or other family in the home. I raised 7 kids, remember? And we never had roaches. But our garbage can was ALWAYS a problem in this way, and it was always the place where somebody splattered tomato sauce. Why is is always tomato sauce?

That leads to the second point. Keep the wall behind clean. You see, I really did have kids in my kitchen. We anchored a layer of white corrugated plastic panels to the wall behind the trash. It often looked messy, but did clean up easier than our lovely wallpaper.

Some people have trouble with open garbage cans under the sink. The entire cabinet becomes a haven for crawling things. Others have problems because the entire house is filled with open trash cans that have food wrappers and refuse in them. Keep it to ONE can, and that needs to be a closed one, OR make sure ALL of the cans are closed.

Experts report that roaches will live and breed inside furniture. I don’t know if this is true or not, I cannot see inside my furniture. But it means that if you have roaches and move, the roaches move with you.

Those same experts assure that they DO NOT LIVE LONG where there is not food for them. Just like coons, they must have a food source, and if you supply it, you can kill all the roaches you like, and more will come because there is still food. But remove the food, and the roaches die, and the coons move out. Granted, sometimes we CAN, and sometimes we cannot. I could not get rid of my chickens and rabbits, and the coons ate spill from them. But we COULD fasten the trash cans better, and keep the lids anchored on, and the coons living under the porch (we could not drive them out, the porch is too low), moved OUT. True story.

Orkin says roaches cannot live indefinitely on dander and hair. They need OTHER nutrients not provided by those. So if you keep the house generally clean, and keep the dishes washed and the gunk scrubbed up, and the food unroachable, roaches won’t stick around. They won’t have enough to live on, and they will move OUT of your bedroom and then out of the kitchen.

Messes should be wiped up promptly, and counters wiped down when dishes are done.

Fruit in bowls will feed roaches if it is overripe. They’ll eat holes in it.

Partially used bags or boxes of cereal, pasta, flour, sugar, potato chips, and other ingredients should be sealed up. Drop them into a zip bag, put them in containers, store them in totes, or whatever that is bug proof. Don’t buy groceries for the roaches.

An outlier I heard about, the roaches were breeding in the WATER HEATER CLOSET, because they had a pack rat there bringing in all sorts of things that the roaches loved. Big old nasty mess.

Some people report that they love laundry. We have not found that this is so, but our laundry does not have seriously dirty clothing with food remains, or dampness that would attract them. It is also done promptly, weekly (thank my husband, he is just the Laundry King, and rocks this job), it does not lay around on the floor, it is always in a basket. In the corner of the kitchen here though (the washer and dryer are there), if a towel is dropped by the dryer, it will have roaches under it within a few hours. So keep your laundry baskets and your laundry room tidy, without piles of stinking sticky or damp laundry.

What is astonishing me is the degree to which I have to change the way I live in order to banish the roaches. A thing I never had, I cannot get rid of, living the way I always did and DIDN’T have them. It tells me it is easier to never have them than to get rid of them once you do. Sorta like bad habits…

Here, I believe the unwinnable battle centers on the kitchen garbage, because it is an unsealed Trash Compactor. There is nothing I can do about it, and perhaps the home owner cannot either. But I know if I EVER have a Trash Compactor (I really like it for consolidating garbage), I will have to ensure that the cabinet for it is sealed.

I am told that a Trash Compactor can be sealed up. I think a trash can that has holes in it (many that are designed for bags have holes in the botttom that bugs can enter) can be done the same way.

Suggestions include using patching made of either inner tube, plastic kitchen cutting mat, or other thick plastic scrap, stuck in place using Shoe Goo, or other strong silicone based adhesive. Patching may be done using silicone caulk also, to caulk the holes shut inside the cabinet.

A gasket may be purchased, and there are several cut to length types that can be used, as well as nitrile or PVC rubber sheeting cut into strips. This is also glued inside using Shoe Goo, to form a continuous barrier around the edge of the door where it meets the cabinet front on the Compactor. Make sure the corners do not gap where ends meet.

In the mean time, perhaps a vigorous spray may help…

Fight the fight, brave ones! It IS getting better as we make the effort.

 

Cockroach Battle Plan

1. Secure the Food. Food storage in roachproof containers, leftovers promptly put away.

2. Minimize Messes. Clean up counters, floors, and tables each time spills occur. When you cook, Clean As You Go. Tidy your laundry stations. Make sure you don’t have oddball breeding places for them

3. Secure the Dishes. Do dishes daily, store dirties in the dishwasher if possible, rinse them and stack them compactly if you have to keep them on the counter.

4. Secure the Trash. Trash in roach proof containers. Don’t leave trash anywhere else, empty trash before it overflows and lets roaches in.

5. Let in the light. Curtains that let light filter through, curtains or blinds open in the daytime.

6. Reduce hiding places. Reduce the places roaches hide and breed.

7. Put out boxed sticky traps and big black bait stations. Put them everywhere the roaches love to inhabit or hide. Go hunting. Spray if necessary and if you can tolerate it.

8. THIS IS WAR!!! The roaches must not win. (Now, if we can just keep them from getting elected…)