Homemade Treatments to Get Rid of Cockroaches
One of the main reasons cockroaches are so numerous is because they are ultra fertile. One of the species found in the United States is the German cockroach. The female can lay approximately 35,000 eggs annually.
And the other reason is that cockroaches can live by eating most anything. They love to eat many kinds of starchy foods and food scraps. They also will eat dead things, the glue on books and on postage stamps, soaps, toothpaste, hair, and, cockroaches will even eat other cockroaches once they are dead.
An effective homemade treatment to get rid of cockroaches is to make a live trap. A tall, wide-mouth canning jar makes a perfect trap. Apply a light coating of petroleum jelly to the inside of the jar up to the lip. You can use a long-handled paint brush to apply the jelly. Then, drop some food scraps into the jar. Tear off a small part of a paper towel and moisten it. Place that into the canning jar as well.
Next, place the jar in a concealed area in your home where you have seen at least one cockroach. (Where there’s one, there’s more.) Tear up the rest of the paper towel into three or four pieces. Moisten the pieces and roll them up. Place one end up to the lip of the canning jar. The other end should lead to the ground.
This is what’s going to happen: during the night, the cockroaches will be attracted to the food scraps and the moisture inside the jar. They will travel up the paper towel pieces and fall into the jar. But, they won’t be able to get back out because of the slippery petroleum jelly coating.
In the morning, check your homemade treatment to get rid of cockroaches. Dispose of the contents of the jar and replace it with fresh food scraps. You can reuse the paper towel. Just re-moisten it.
Keep in mind this canning jar trap won’t kill cockroaches. But it will trap them so you can get rid of them.
If you want to actually kill any cockroaches that are in your home, then you can use another homemade treatment. The beauty of this mix is that, even though it’s toxic to your pests, it’s not dangerous to children or pets. Simply mix up a cup of baking soda and a cup of white sugar. Place this mixture into some small, unused dishes. Place the cockroach bait in places around your home where you’ve seen these pests.
Here’s what will happen: the cockroaches will be attracted to the sugar. They’ll eat the white sugar mixed in with the baking soda. The soda will interact with their stomach acids and kill them dead.
