Fighting an ongoing cockroach infestation can be troublesome. Still, suppose you are active in your efforts to prevent cockroaches from getting into your home in the first place. In that case, you’ll find that a prevention routine is much easier to deal with than the uphill battle that eliminates cockroach infestations from your home after the fact.
This article discusses how to prevent cockroaches from entering your home in the first place, so let’s get started!
Read More: Complete Guide To Getting Rid Of Roaches
1. Keep Your House Clean
Cleaning your home is one of the best ways to get rid of cockroaches and keep roaches from entering your home in the first place. Whether you are doing something as simple as sweeping up food debris after dinner or cleaning up any pet food containers that may have spilled, make sure to clean it up. Overall, every crumb can easily contribute a reason for roaches to hunt for their next meal in your home.
Even more, taking time to eliminate food sources cockroaches look for keeps them from having a sustainable source to get an infestation going. In that case, even if you saw a few, you can actively stem the tide in your favor.
2. Keep Eating Habits in One Room
Another good cockroach prevention measure is to keep all of your meals and snacking in one room. This also keeps food crumbs and droppings in one specific room.
This will not only make the process of storing food more straightforward, but you’d only be cleaning up your kitchen or dining room. This means you won’t be tracking a mess throughout the home, which will, of course, take even more time to clean.
Suppose you aren’t keen on sitting in your kitchen or dining room to eat. In that case, you don’t have to go for the tried and traditional method. But isolating your eating to just one room will make your whole life easier and even provide more stability in your day-to-day life due to setting a routine.
3. Store Food Properly
How you handle stored and leftover food can make all the difference in the world when it comes to keeping any German cockroaches and any American cockroaches out of your kitchen. Although you might have had a long day and forgot to tidy up, you risk roaches sneaking into your pantry, cabinets, or refrigerator.
One of the best ways you can do this is by storing foods to refrigerate in sealed containers. For example, put the sugar in the fridge instead of out in the open, where cockroaches can get into it. Do not use clips to close up chip bags and similar items since cockroaches can get inside the bags that way. Instead, take it a step further and place those food items in sealable bags or containers. Otherwise, they will get a free meal!
4. Get Rid of Yard Debris
Piles of trash in your yard or surrounding outdoor trash cans can quickly invite roaches to begin making their way into your home. More often than not, your choices outside your home serve as a gateway for unsightly visitors to grace your doorstep.
Roaches love damp and moist areas primarily because the bugs themselves require a lot of moisture to survive. In that case, any leaf litter, stacks of wood, or even turned-over furniture left outside can temporarily house these pests.
Even worse, if you have cardboard boxes lying about, that can be an even bigger issue, as roaches will eat cardboard if there are no better options. In particular, Oriental cockroaches will do anything to persist to the next day.
5. Seal Entry Points in Your Home
Roach infestations happen when any number of bugs, roaches included, have an easy way to get into your home. This can be under the door, through window frames or tiny cracks in the wall; even pipe drains can prove to be viable means of entry into your home.
Taking time to carefully inspect the outside and inside of your home for any openings will give you more peace of mind about how roaches can get in and actively seek out any hiding spaces these pests might use to establish a foothold in your home.
What Keeps Cockroaches Away?
Eliminating any moisture and water sources in your home keeps cockroaches away. Cockroaches will migrate elsewhere almost immediately if this is fixed. Having leaky faucets or stand-alone water is problematic because even leaky faucets can provide roaches with enough water to get them by the next day.
Another natural roach repellent method you can use in your home or business is strong scents like perfumes and colognes or alternative household items with citrus smells. These things will overload a roach’s sense of smell and sometimes give enough strength even to suffocate the pests outright!
What Are the Ways to Prevent and Control Cockroaches?
The ways to prevent and control cockroaches include cleaning your kitchen floor and any other viable surface with something like vinegar or Pine-Sol, which repels roaches. These two cleaning agents leave a lasting scent in your home that prevents roaches from coming near.
You can also invest time keeping your house tidy while handling food and checking behind hanging fixtures like bathroom cabinets and wooden shelves. This guarantees you do not have any cracks that are out of sight.
Your outdoor environment can play a significant factor in whether or not roaches manage to get into your home as well. Even a stray plastic bag propped against your home can serve as a bridge allowing these pests to skitter up the wall and into a crack.
Why Do I Have Roaches in My Clean House?
You have roaches in your clean house because your home has something that is attracting them. Some examples might be that your neighbors in your apartment building aren’t the cleanest of people. Another reason is that your kids have hidden a snack behind a dresser, or you need to clear blocked drains that give roaches easy access to water.
Your best bet is to find out what is attracting them and isolate how they get in. Afterward, remove what they are eating that keeps them there, and finally, remove all points they use to access water.
Call Pest Control for Large Infestations
If the infestation has gone from bad to worse, it is time to call a professional exterminator. You can reach out to an exterminator to develop a plan to keep other roaches from turning up in your home and get a bit of specialist know-how in your back pocket to inform you on how to kill them all and keep them all from coming back.
