#also in the grand scheme I cannot emphasize enough my family doesn't even have it THAT BAD we just live in Florida

[solarpunkani]

For your roach problem, no one is expecting you to just deal with roaches. But you can live without commercial chemical pesticides and soon you'll have no choice but to do so. Commercial pesticides are also jeopardizing your family's health. Research the suggestions we're giving you and change your family's pesticide habit.

Keep out indoor roaches with:

Diatomaceous Earth

Baking Soda

Boric Acid

Borax

Citrus

Peppermint or Lemongrass Essential Oils

Caulk all Entry Points

And keep out outdoor roaches by laying sticky traps at cracks around doors, windows, and foundations.

Frogs, birds, lizards, and spiders are natural predators of roaches. If you're getting a lot of roaches, then your yard must be a safe haven from roach predators. Attract roach predators by cultivating native plants. And then remove anything that looks like a roach hiding spot so the predators have the upper hand.

From all the reblogs I've been getting on that post, it sure does feel like a lot of yall are expecting people to just deal with roaches.

My family doesn't even have bad bad problems with roaches (asides from that one year we deep cleaned the garage and they all decided to Head Indoors, that was awful). My sister moved into an apartment once that was literally infested with roaches. We had to spend the whole weekend stomping and paranoid and mixing borax with eggs and caulking, and it never really came to an end until we pulled out the pesticides.

I mean. I've tried some of these. And some of them have worked a little (read: barely, not really).

I don't think its a good idea to put diatomaceous earth down in our house because we have a small and old dog, and while it's dry it's incredibly bad to breathe in, and if it's wet it's... not effective. Also we're in Florida.

I actually asked my mom if we'd tried baking soda before, and she said no! She also said it'd probably be extremely slow acting, like borax is. So I guess if you've got forever and a day to wait...

I will admit, boric acid and borax do work! If you're willing to cross your fingers, hope they find it, and wait for weeks to see if the roaches all die. My sister moved into an apartment that had an undisclosed roach infestation, and mixing boric acid/borax with eggs and sticking it on top of shelves and crossing our fingers was one of the things my mom did. We also used sticky traps, and bait poisons. The other thing we did was use Home Defense spray on the outside and stomp or spray any we found inside. And I cannot emphasize enough we did not have the goddamn time to be sitting and twiddling our thumbs to wait for every single roach to find the borax and die. We brought in a pizza and within like 5 minutes there were roaches dive bombing us from the ceiling over the table. And my sister had already signed the lease before we knew it was this bad.

I'll be real, I seriously doubt we've tried the citrus/essential oils thing. Also have heavy doubts it'd be effective in any sense, but also some essential oils are bad for dogs. Which we have. And many people do.

Caulking all entry points works if you know where they're coming in from. If the way they're getting in is 'sneaking in while you let the dog out' (has happened) or 'crawled in while you were entering the house after a night out' (has happened) or 'entered from the garage while you were looking for something' (has happened) caulking ain't such an easy solution.

Regarding sticky traps, while I imagine they'd work great outside, I've also seen a ton of the same people who are anti-pesticide also be anti-sticky trap because they don't discriminate and will also trap things like mice, lizards, snakes, etc.

"Your yard must be a safe haven for roach predator" I can acknowledge that this makes sense! But we also need to acknowledge that not everyone has direct control over making their yard a safe haven for an array of creatures. Was my sister in her apartment supposed to plant native plants in the regularly-mowed patch of grass that sat by the parking lot? Was she supposed to manually remove the roach hiding spot that is the apartment complex dumpster? There are so many situations where people do not have direct control over that kind of stuff--apartments, dorms, HOA living, renting, etc. Are they supposed to 'just deal?'

"Soon you'll have no choice to do so" not being offered a lot of other choices in the long run at this point either. Also I can gently encourage my parents all I want, at the end of the day its their house and they can do what they want. And if they don't wanna wait an extra week to hope some boric acid and sticky traps kills a roach while they continue laying eggs who knows where, I don't really have any direct control over that.

#ani rambles #out of queue #answered asks #anonymous #also in the grand scheme I cannot emphasize enough my family doesn't even have it THAT BAD we just live in Florida #house pest saga