Cockroaches are a major nuisance pest for most of the country, but it’s even worse in southern states like Louisiana due to their preference for moist, warm, and somewhat tropical habitats. Since they’ve become uniquely adapted to living amidst humans, they can become a serious household pest. They don’t merely pose an annoyance, though, as cockroaches are a source of allergens and pose an even bigger health threat to those people that have asthma. Knowing how to manage cockroach pests in your home is necessary when the pests have infiltrated our world to the point that they have.

The first strategy for controlling cockroach pests is preventing their presence from entering your home in the first place. This involves checking your home over for possible spots cockroaches could find their way in and sealing any crevices or cracks you may find in your kitchen, bathroom, exterior walls, doors, and windows. You may also need to make certain structural modifications to make your home such as using pipe collars and weather stripping. Even if you make sure your home is sealed tightly from the outside, you still will need to make sure your home is as inhospitable to cockroaches as possible. This involves using the second strategy for controlling cockroaches, which is sanitation. This is doing things around your house to deny cockroaches access to food, water, and shelter so they don’t want to settle in. You want to make sure to keep your home clean, particularly your kitchen where crumbs might be lying around or the food in your pantry and cupboards might not be in properly sealed and tight containers or your pet’s food might be left in its bowl for cockroaches to devour at night. You can eliminate possible shelter by making sure your home isn’t cluttered with papers, rags, or anything else that could become a convenient hideaway. Fixing things like plumbing leaks, drains, and sink traps will help eliminate any possible source of water for cockroaches.

If you have already found cockroaches in your home, there are two other strategies you can apply towards eliminating them. The first strategy is to trap cockroaches in your home using commercially available cockroach traps. These are most effective when placed against vertical surfaces, in corners, inside cabinets, under sinks, in the basement, and by floor drains. The last thing you can do to rid your home of cockroaches is to use chemical controls. You can find numerous commercially available insecticides and instructions on how to properly use them. This is probably the point when you might want to call in a pest control professional for some help as well.

What strategies do you use to manage cockroach pests in your home?