I never had this problem when I lived up north. There were some problems at a restaurant that I cleaned but that was all. It was only when I moved down south years ago that I first encountered the problem.
We bought a small house and lived in it while my husband went to school. Afterward we rented it out for a year. When we returned to live in it again it was INFESTED with roaches!!.
We tried using an exterminator, but the roaches were out dancing the next day. A friend of mine told me about Boric Acid powder. Very cheap but poisonous to people, kids and pets. I will talk about this later in the article.
When I worked at the animal shelter I learned that there were different varieties of roaches.
4 TYPES OF ROACHES
The German common roach
About an inch in length.
The Oriental Roach
Larger roach, dark rounded flat bodies about 1 to 1.5 inches
The American Roach
About 1.5 to 2 inches in length. These fly. A horde of them flew onto our porch in South Carolina one summer. Glad they didn’t stay!
The Palmetto Bug – Roach
I saw these in Florida. They are also in South Carolina, I saw them on the trees outside. They are about 2 or 3 inches in length
KEEP THINGS CLEAN & TIDY
They can live on nothing but dried glue, so keep everything super clean! Make sure you clean under the burners on your stove. They are sneaky so they scatter when you turn on the light.
YOU COULD TRY THE PEST CONTROL GUY
I didn’t like the idea of poisons or chemicals in my home but we had such a problem we used a pest service after our renters moved out. The treatment did reduce the number of bugs but they were still there. It did kill all of the spiders. After a month I still saw roaches and I decided to do it myself.
Caution!!! Warning!!! Poison!! I used an inexpensive powder called boric acid from the drug store. This is available seasonally at Home Depot, Lowes, and Dollar General too. This is extremely toxic! A small amount could kill a child or pet! I put it in a pie tin with some sugar in the center, and placed it inside a kitchen cabinet where my pets or children could not reach.
The roaches walk in the boric acid to reach the sugar, then they clean their legs when they get back to the nest. They die from ingesting it. When their eggs hatch in 6 weeks, the babies eat the dead roaches and this kills them. A double whammy!
A NATURAL SOLUTION
These days I would recommend Diatomaceous Earth – food grade.
I haven’t any roaches to try this on myself but Diatomaceous Earth will scratch their outer shells and then they would lose moisture and die. This is not a poison, but be careful not to get it in your eyes as it will scratch them, nor should you breathe it into your lungs. See video below.
DIATOMAEOUS EARTH TO SAFELY KILL BUGS
