How To Manage Cockroaches in Your Home

Best Ways To Eliminate Roaches

There is no pest sneakier than the cockroach. Some people might say, “But what about fleas? Bed bugs? Mosquitoes? Rats?” All of these are sneaky in their own ways. But think about this: Fleas bite you, bed bugs ruin your bed, mosquitoes drink your blood, and rats carry disease. What do cockroaches do?

Cockroaches are hard to deal with because they do very little to antagonize people. That is not to say they are ambassadors of peace, however; so, how do you deal with them? An environmentally friendly pest control company has provided us with two solutions to your roaches’ problem. Let’s learn more about these chemical and non-chemical options.

The Chemical Solutions

Oftentimes when people think of chemicals for killing bugs they think of sprays, bug bombs, and lures. These are all well and good, but the first chemical method you should be using is actually anti-bug dusts. Dust is odorless, easy to clean, and easier to keep track of than any other chemical solution.

Bug Bombs

Sprays, bug bombs, and lures are all unseemly, ranging from the nuclear option of bug bombing your whole house to borderline placeboes of sprays. Anti-bug dusts allow you to manage the bugs in your house without clearing the house out, while also guaranteeing results.

They are not completely without drawbacks. It must be said, dusts have a texture akin to powdered sugar, albeit a bit heavier. This means that anti-bug dusts are not going to be carried on the air (thankfully), but it also means they will need to be thoroughly cleaned out of whatever crevice or crack you spread the dust. Fortunately, anti-bug dusts are generally designed with cleanup in mind. This is why they are a great first option: Spread the dust wherever you see cockroaches frequently travel, then clean up the refuse once the cockroaches are no longer a problem. Afterward, it will be as if the cockroaches were never there.

Lures

Another alternative to bug bombs is the lures mentioned earlier. These are usually made of cardboard or plastic, are shaped like cages, and contain a little adhesive on their insides along with cockroach-attracting pheromones. The cockroach will smell the pheromones, walk into the cage, and get stuck on the adhesive. These lures have the advantage of being easy to set out and use almost anywhere, as well as incredibly low maintenance to clean up. Some are even reusable, though in those cases you have to be willing to clean the dead roaches out of them. Just so long as you place them where roaches will actually find them, they will work. The drawback of lures is their odor. Some lures are odorless, but many will claim to be odorless and clearly stink anyways. They always work, however, so consider lures if you do not want to clean dust.

Non-Chemical Solutions

Everything so far has been a solution that involves buying a product you have probably never even heard of before, using it hoping it would do something you have never seen before, and cleaning it not knowing if it was meant to be cleaned. In short, chemical solutions can be stressful, as they have a lot of uncertainty to them.

For that reason, many people seek out solutions to how to manage cockroaches that involve no chemicals at all. And if you are one such person, then the first thing you will want to consider is sanitation.

Sanitizing against pest means taking away three things: Food, water, and shelter. Take away any of these three and bugs will either die or go elsewhere.

They are living things just like humans, after all (okay, maybe not just like humans, but close enough). This means they have certain survival needs. And as all humans instinctually know, if an environment does not meet one’s survival needs, it is easier to leave and find those needs elsewhere than try to “make it work”.

Getting rid of their food means cleaning your carpet, nooks, and crannies out of any crumbs or food items that might be hiding in them. Addressing their water means fixing any leaky pipes that might be sating the cockroach’s thirst. Shelter is, in a way, the easiest to address of all of these.

Getting rid of the cockroach’s habitat necessitates the disposal of old boxes and newspapers. This is nice because what can act as a shelter is obvious once you think of them as such.

Do all this and you will have managed your cockroaches in no time.