It’s important to know how to get rid of cockroaches in kitchen cabinets?, in order to protect your family. It’s a nasty topic that no one really wants to think about, and surely we’d all rather ignore the existence of creepy creatures’ altogether but how to get rid of cockroaches in kitchen cabinets is important to protect your family.
If you are like the millions of other people all over the world who are forced to deal with cockroaches (because yes, cockroaches are a worldwide problem!), and you have come looking for a solution, we can help. Of course, one solution could be searching for pest control experts that can help you get rid of your pest problem. You may be surprised to see that there are a lot of services in your local area that can help. However, if you prefer to be a little more hands on about the issue, you can continue reading to find out more.
First, you need to understand the types of cockroaches you’re dealing with before deep diving into the topic of how to get rid of cockroaches in kitchen cabinets.
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Check Hurry! Tips For Getting Rid Of Cockroaches!
Cockroaches like human houses because they provide them with warm spaces to live and plenty of food to eat. While you can’t exactly make your home entirely inhospitable, you can do a lot to minimize its invite so that they will either die off or look for a better place to live that has more of what they need.
Approaches for getting rid of cockroaches should focus first and foremost on removing food sources as much as possible and also on removing hiding spaces where they can make their homes.
Cockroaches are scavengers. They have adapted to survive without food for long periods of time. But they need water often. Unfortunately for humans, we tend to keep food and water in relatively the same place. And this makes a great opportunity for cockroaches (and they thank you).
Types of Cockroaches – Know Your Enemy
It has been estimated that there are around 3500 different species of cockroaches in the world giving homeowners plenty of unnecessary headaches when they invade. Americans normally deal with three kinds of cockroaches:
- The German Cockroaches
- The Oriental Cockroaches
- The American Cockroaches
Their names can be deluding even so, as the crawling are believed to have come from northeastern regions of Africa. Cockroaches weren’t created to live alongside human beings and only one percent of all species are classified as pests.
Roaches find it easy to travel from one to another by means similar to our own. It is very easy for a cockroach to stow away in luggage, shipments, and especially in kitchen cabinets. These cockroaches find their way into our homes simply looking for food and shelter.
The German Cockroaches
The German cockroach is the most common of them all.
It is often called ‘human with 18 legs’ because it is thriving wherever humans live, sharing the same habitats and eating the same foods. Measuring roughly a ½ an inch in length and is distinguishable because of its brown color or light tan with two distinctive dark bands running vertically along the top of its body. Although it has wings, this insect is unable to fly. But it will run like hell for two reasons: if it sees food or if it needs to hide from the bottom of a shoe.
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Their Favorite Hides
The German cockroach is ‘well known’ amongst restaurant owners and for a good reason. The German cockroach is always searching for food and that makes a restaurant roach heaven. But your own home kitchen will do as well.
The Oriental Cockroaches
The Oriental cockroach, a.k.a. the “water bug”, is larger than its German cousin measuring almost one inch at maturity. This is considered to be the king of all creeps, the nastiest of all house-infesting cockroaches.
The oriental cockroach is very brownish and only the male is capable of flight lengths of 2-3 meters, or 3-9 feet. The female is wider than the male and has short wings that cannot support flight.
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Their Favorite Hides
They love decomposing organic matter and could be found below floors and walls interior but cockroaches prefer damp cellars. Other favorite hide outs of cockroaches are beneath refrigerators, near leaky water pipes and washing machines.
The American Cockroaches
The largest among the three species is the American Cockroach. Approximately 1 ½ inches long, this cockroach is unbelievably swift moving and well-equipped for flight. The American cockroach is believed to have emigrated from northeastern Africa also but had already established a strong foothold in the southern U.S. Along the time it had been named.
American cockroaches are brown-reddish with yellow discoloration behind their head.
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Their Favorite Hides
American cockroaches usually don’t infest and live inside human homes, preferring to scavenge off the land as a means to survive. However, they can be found occasionally inside a residence, looking for shelter from the cold. They often encroach upon sewer systems. Grocery store packages are also a favorite transportation.
How Long Does It Take To Get Rid Of Roaches?
Cockroaches can outlast a couple of days without food if they have a stable supply of water, but thirst will kill them quickly. If you live in an area that’s usually wet and you’re experiencing a drought or a dry spell, cockroaches will come into your house seeking water and shade.
After you cleaned thoroughly, lay down your liners. Cut them so that they cover every inch of your shelves. Now you can put everything back. Next, focus your attention to your stove and refrigerator. The crevices are underneath, on top, and on both sides. If you can, gently move your refrigerator so you can properly clean it underneath. Same with the stove or oven. If you have a toaster, clean it and store it somewhere. Don’t use it for a while. Toast is great but the risk of dropping crumbs is not worth it.
7 Days Challenge
How to get rid of cockroaches in kitchen cabinets begins with DEFENSE!
How To Kill Cockroaches is a question most homeowners ask. The basic idea here is to find out the root cause which helps these cockroaches infest your home. The strategies to kill them are:
Day 1: Minimize The Food Available For Them
Cockroaches eat many things, including paper, cardboard, and common human foods. They particularly prefer carbohydrate-based foods. The more food that is available the more they will proliferate. To limit cockroach food sources:
This is most likely ground zero for cockroach activity. Empty all of your shelves and cabinets. I’m serious. Remove all the food storage items, cans, pots, pans, and dishes. Clean and disinfect all shelves and cupboards with a proper detergent solution, I like to use white vinegar (I’m not a big fan of chemicals) but you can get bleach too or whatever else your store has that will do the trick.
Do’s
- Keep counters and drawers clean of food, crumbs, and food particles.
- Use strong glass or plastic containers to keep foods in, including dried goods, cereals, pastas, flours, and staple foods.
- All containers should have tight-fitting lids.
- Wipe up food and counters after every food preparation, and keep floors swept or vacuumed clean.
- Sponge-mop hard floors at least once weekly.
- Clean stove tops, etc. regularly as well.
- Remove pet foods or place them inside a pet bowl inside a pan of soapy water.
- Buy shelve or wall liners.
Don’ts
- Don’t use low-quality plastic bags as cockroaches will chew it up.
- . Do not let water stand on floors or in sinks or drains or along piping and plumbing, either, as cockroaches need moisture and water sources to survive as well.
- If possible, only eat in one room from now on until you have eliminated the threat. This will make your life easier by knowing which rooms you have to pay special cleaning attention to before going to bed every night.
Day 2: Seal Your Home
Take a walk around the outside of your property. Look at your front door. Take notice of the space at the bottom and sides where it should fit snug against the frame. Are there spaces and gaps? If so, you will need to correct this with weather strips.
The weather stripping for the bottom of the door is most important. Making sure the bottom has no gap is essential. You will have to remove the door from the hinge to install the bottom stripping correctly.
Remember, cockroaches don’t need more than 1/16 of an inch gap to gain entry so its best to give them no room to enter. The sides and top of the door frame are next. These are easier to do as it’s just a matter of peeling apart the adhesive covering from a rubber strip and pressing onto the door frame.
Day 3: Check Your Window Frames
Next, take a look around your window frames on the ground level. There may be gaps where the frame meets the house siding. You can also use the spray foam to fill these in or use caulking. Look at the rest of the house and fill in cracks or crevices. If you have water valves on the outside, like for a garden hose, make sure the pipes that lead into the building are sealed also and make sure the garden hose isn’t leaking.
If cockroaches can’t get inside, then they will try to stay as close as possible to your home, their main food source. I suggest you replace your mulch, if you have any around your home with gravel.
Cockroaches tend to find harborage, or places to live, at the base of the home or basement but usually in crevices where they can physically feel a material on top of them. They like that snugly feeling I guess.
Check the area where you keep the garbage and recycling. Clean these areas frequently with bleach or ammonia or white vinegar.
Day 3: Remove Stagnant Water
You will be able to stop their encroachment by removing any stagnant water and other spilled liquids. Do not allow filthy dishwater or a glass of water lying around in your house. Tighten up any leakages in your bathroom or kitchen sink; be sure that your toilette lid is firmly placed on the bowl. Even though the roach is possibly able to slip underneath the toilet lid, your toilette is designed with an overhanging lip so that bugs will fall in the water whenever they try to climb out of the bowl.
Under your refrigerator, there’s a pan that catches excess moisture. Make sure to clean the pan on a regular basis and keep them dry. Take time to move your refrigerator sporadically and clean the floor below it. Inevitably you will find a crumb of food or 2, and that is a feast for the cockroaches: a warm dark eating house where dozens of bugs can crowd in. Another reservoir of moisture is your pet’s drinking bowl.
Dry out the floor around these bowls sporadically: the drips from your pets’ mouths may become a cockroach playground.
In addition to be sure that the lowland areas of your yard are free of clutter just in case water builds up in them. You can also use gravel, sand, or topsoil to fill these lowland areas in.
Now Let’s Talk about Offense
Ingredients For Your Weapon
Day 5: Prepare Your Weapon
The boric acid powder I recommend comes in an ideal pourable applicator bottle. The bottle will also not be filled to the top when purchased. I want you to fill the rest of the bottle with sugar, leaving only about an inch or two of empty space. Shake up the bottle.
When the roaches eat the mixture, they will determine if it’s poison or food. The sugar will assure them its food while the boric acid will kill them. Walk around the outside of your building pouring a little puff of the powder whenever a potential entrance for roaches maybe be found.
Day 6: Attack Their Hiding Places
Pay attention again to the door entrances, windows, and garage doors. Any cracks in outside walls near the ground should get filled with some powder. Around the perimeter of garage doors is a definite entrance for roaches and the powder should be applied on both sides. You should clean up and reapply the powder solution every two to three months.
The boric acid solution is effective all by itself. But it takes time. How much time? Well, you will see a reduction in a few days or sometimes in a few weeks. Eventually, as a year or two pass by we will finally feel cockroach free. But we can’t wait months or years now, can we?? No!!
Day 7: Cockroach Spray – Chemicals
Now we need to introduce our next weapon of mass roach destruction. This will shorten your timeline to being roach free. I personally used the ORTHO brand of cockroach bait but you can also use the HARRIS ROCK TABLETS brand as well.
They both don’t only kill cockroaches when ingested but it will also kill cockroaches that eat those dead cockroaches or the feces of the cockroaches that ate the poison. These are remarkably effective products that exponentially increase your kill rate. The cockroaches eat this poison and go back to their harborage. They will die about 3-5 hours after ingesting the poison.
For the cockroaches that won’t eat this poison, the boric acid will work anyway. We just need to make sure the boric acid is applied in the right areas. Because even if the cockroaches don’t directly eat either poison, they will walk through the boric acid and bring it back to the harborage. There they will groom themselves, ingesting the boric acid as they clean it off of themselves.
Conclusion
The points mentioned above have to be followed in order to achieve success and the best possible solution to how to get rid of cockroaches in kitchen cabinets.
Once every three months it is a good idea to have a comprehensive pest control inspection of your home. This would not only eliminate the cockroaches but also remove other harmful home pests. A clean home void of cockroaches will help you and your family enjoy a better quality of life, free from unwanted ailments and diseases.
As you can see we are just getting started here, but we promise you much more to come. From here on out we will be building up this site as a first-line resource and a solution related to architecture, construction, and interior décor.
