Our kitchen is one of the places where you will mostly find cockroaches in the home. Why is that so? The main reason is that the kitchen has almost everything that the cockroaches need to survive.
The kitchen provides them with shelter, food, and water. However, the kitchen should be the last place you would want to be seeing cockroaches walking around like they own the home.
Your cats in the house cannot do anything about it because they have no beef with cockroaches, unlike how they hunt down mice. This means that it is up to you to remove the cockroaches from your kitchen.
The kitchen is the place where you prepare your food, and as we all know, cockroaches are not one of the cleanest insects in the world. They are filthy, and they would pass anywhere without thinking about it.
They will also eat anything that comes their way. They are not picky like your cat, and anything goes. Cockroaches are also known to live in the dirtiest of places, such as garbage areas, sewers, and drains.
This show proves that roaches love being dirty, and it’s probably their nature. And as such, you cannot allow such rodents into your kitchen because when they leave their dirty homes, they carry all sorts of harmful bacteria from the garbage places and the sewers and the drains with them.
They then bring these into your kitchen and contaminate your food. If you have been wondering why your husband got knocked down with food poisoning, this might be the reason.
So, to get your home and kitchen clean, you need to get rid of the cockroaches completely. Let us first look at the symptoms that will let you know if your kitchen has been infested with cockroaches.
Signs That You Have A Cockroach Infestation
A few signs will let you know if you are dealing with a cockroach infestation in your kitchen. Here are the characters below.
Seeing An Actual Cockroach
If you start seeing actual cockroaches in your kitchen, you possibly have lots of them hidden in the kitchen.
Cockroaches Droppings
You can also tell that there is a cockroach infestation if you start seeing their droppings around in your kitchen. Their droppings typically look like ground pepper or coffee grounds.
They can be found anywhere that the cockroaches are present. So once you start seeing them in your kitchen, you should know that you have a cockroach infestation in your kitchen.
Discarded Eggshells
These are also known as oothecae. The cases of cockroach eggshells are oblong and brown.
This could mean cockroaches in your home are busily reproducing to increase their population. These cockroach eggshells can usually be found stuck to cabinet doors and furniture.
The Dangers Of Having Cockroaches In Your Kitchen
It would help if you kept yourself protected from cockroaches because they are can be harmful to your health. Let us look at why keeping them out of your home is essential.
Asthma And Allergies
Cockroaches can send allergens into the air through saliva, feces, and the shedding of their body parts.
These allergens can then irritate your respiratory system, especially if you already suffer from allergies or asthma, causing you to have an attack.
Sign Of Infestation
Most people think that seeing one or two cockroaches does not mean anything. However, they fail to see that these cockroaches do not move alone. Seeing even just one around your kitchen could be a sign that the gang is hiding somewhere in the kitchen, or they are on their way.
Diseases
Cockroaches carry diseases due to their places—these pests like living in dirty areas like garbage, sewers and drains.
They are one of the most dangerous pests when it comes to carrying diseases around. They can infect you with salmonella, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, gastroenteritis, and many other conditions.
Contamination Of Food
Apart from spreading diseases, these pests can also give you food poisoning by contaminating your food and your water supply with germs.
When you ingest anything that cockroaches have contaminated, you can fall seriously sick.
How To Keep Cockroaches Out
So we have now seen some symptoms that show that one could be having a possible cockroach infestation in his home.
You need to know how to keep the cockroaches away from your home kitchen and your home. Below are some tips that can help you keep the cockroaches out of your kitchen and home.
Cleaning Up
Keeping your kitchen clean usually is your line of defense against the cockroaches infesting your kitchen., especially the German cockroach.
Always wipe your sink to get rid of any food crumbs. It would help if you also cleaned the small appliances like the toasters and microwaves to get rid of any food crumbs in them.
Do not leave any dirty dishes in the sink or on the countertops overnight, and cockroaches are primarily active during the night. It would help if you also sealed your garbage tightly, and you must take the trash in the kitchen outside daily.
Using Proper Storage
The cockroaches can crawl their way through small spaces. This shows that as soon as they can get inside kitchen cabinets and pantry, they will be able to find their way to your boxes or food cartons.
As such, you should make sure that your food is stored in airtight containers to prevent roaches from getting into it. Keep your pet foods also sealed tightly to prevent the bugs from going there too.
Always put the leftover foods away or throw them out. Leaving pet food on overnight is like inviting cockroaches to a party, and they will certainly not disappoint you.
Moisture Management
Moisture can also be an attraction for cockroaches. After all, they have been to live in places like drains. You should look out for any faucets that may be leaking and check for excess moisture in your kitchen cabinets under the sink.
Repair any holes in the pipes or around it with caulk and repair all leaky faucets as soon as you spot them. You can use a drain cleaner to clean out your drains as well.
You can get the drain cleaner at grocery stores and any supermarket near you, so make sure to get one for yourself as soon as possible.
After you have used the drain cleaner to clean out your drains, you then use the drain cover to keep the cockroaches from coming inside your kitchen.
You should take this tip seriously because your drains can get filled up with food particles, which can invite cockroaches.
Sealing Cracks
Several cockroaches can enter your home through cracks and not just through sewers alone. Due to how small their bodies are, these cockroaches can enter through small cracks into your home.
So to tackle this, you should expect the area around your kitchen for any gaps, holes, or cracks.
You can add weather stripping on your doors and then seal the cracked areas around the windows so that the cockroaches will not be able to crawl through into your kitchen.
Clean With Borax Powder
Borax is a well-known product for cleaning that is also deadly to cockroaches.
Cleaning your cabinets and parts of your kitchen with this can help keep them at bay.
Using Powdered Sugar
No one would have thought that you could use something like sugar to get rid of pests.
When you put some powdered sugar in a bowl inside your cabinet, it will help keep the cockroaches away.
Using Bay Leaves
Although they do not kill, Bay leaves are a natural repellant for cockroaches.
However, the cockroaches hate the smell of the bay, so they stay away from it. You can stick the leaves to the cabinet and allow them to do their work.
Using Water And Soap
You can also use a mixture of water and soap spray to repel the cockroaches from coming into your kitchen.
When sprayed on them, this mixture will dry them out and kill them. Just mix equal parts of water and soap inside a bottle, and you are ready to go on some righteous murder mission.
Seeking Professional
Although you may follow all the tips that have been shown above, you can still do with professional help.
Your best efforts may not be enough, and you may end up seeing the cockroaches walking around your kitchen like you owe them rent.
You know, sometimes they can be stubborn, and the more you try to keep them out, the more they try to show you that you can do so.
In this case, seeking professional help would do the trick. These cockroaches have been around since the age of the dinosaurs, so you can guess how strong they can be. Don’t let those tiny bodies fool you.
You can simply use a professional pest control company to take care of the cockroaches’ infestation for you. The pest control company will inspect your house and then pinpoint all areas that are at fault.
They also know the methods that will be more effective in dealing with the pests. All you have to do is call any pest control company you know and talk it over with them.
Benefits Of Calling Professional Pest Control
When you call the professionals to handle the job, some benefits come. Here are a few of them below.
- They have experience in fighting cockroaches. We are talking about years of experience here. So they know all the tricks that the cockroaches like to use.
- They come to the job with the proper equipment to ensure that the job is done efficiently. This means that not even one cockroach would be able to hide.
- They know where precisely the cockroaches like to hide when they infiltrate your house, so they will know exactly where to look for them.
- They will make sure that they get rid of the cockroaches effectively and ensure that they cannot come back quickly.
Conclusion
So you have now seen how to deal with the annoying cockroaches you have been seeing in your kitchen.
If you have been ignoring the thought that they are not harmful, they are indeed laughing at you in their tiny heads.
These pests are hazardous and need to be dealt with. From this article, you are now equipped with how to deal with them and keep them from your home. Go out there now and kill you some cockroaches.
