As hot weather arrives, you might start preparing your home to prevent cockroaches. Just like we like to stay inside in the cool temperature, many insects, specifically cockroaches, like to do the same. You might find yourself with a cockroach infestation before you know it. Luckily, you can easily prevent a home cockroach infestation by following these seven tips.
1. Keep Your Home Clean
One of the easiest and best prevention methods to keep cockroaches out of your home is to maintain a clean home. This doesn’t mean to just clean up after meals and snacks but keep your entire house clean. Sanitation is the key to avoiding cockroaches. You can do this by regularly cleaning counters, floors, stovetops, and tables in your kitchen and dining room, in addition to wiping down these surfaces after every use. You should also always empty your sink of dishes before you go to bed. Be sure not to leave any food out uncovered overnight or during the day, and take your garbage out regularly. You’ll also want to think about your pets. Don’t keep their food and water bowls out at night; instead, put them away.
2. Remove Any Access Points to Your Home
In addition to keeping your home clean, make sure cockroaches don’t have any access points to get inside your house. You can do this by thoroughly inspecting your home for cracks, holes, and crevices. Even if you think an area is too small for a cockroach to enter through, it should be sealed off anyway. This means making sure to seal around utility pipes and crawl spaces. You may also seal around windows and doors and equip them with weather-stripping.
3. Check Boxes, Bags, and Other Items You Bring into Your Home
Something most people don’t think to do is to check what you bring into your home for cockroaches before the items get inside. When you bring boxes, bags, and containers in from the garage, storage, or grocery store, be sure to inspect the inside before you bring it into your home. Oftentimes, cockroaches can hide in these, which makes it easy for you to bring them into your home unknowingly. If you go shopping at thrift stores or garage sales, you should also inspect the items you purchased for cockroaches before bringing them into your home.
4. Cockroach-Proof Your Yard
Even if you have sealed off all entry points, cockroaches can squeeze through just about any crevice or crack, even if it would seem impossible to do. This means you need to prepare your yard to keep cockroaches away too. Keep any vegetation away from your home. If you have a garden, be sure it is a good distance away from your house. The same goes for piles of firewood. Bushes, trees, flowers, and other shrubs should also not be planted directly against your home. These give cockroaches easy access to your home and windows.
5. Remove Any Items Cockroaches Can Use as Shelter
Cockroaches like dark areas for shelter, specifically ones made from cardboard or paper products. If you have any cardboard boxes or other cardboard items lying around your home, attic, garage, or even crawl space, you might want to get rid of the cardboard and replace any boxes with plastic containers. Cockroaches also love other paper products for shelter, so try to limit the amount of paper you have sitting around, such as old magazines, paper trash, and other items. This will help to make your house inhospitable to cockroaches.
6. Limit the Areas in Your Home Where You Eat
Limiting where you eat and bring food into your home goes hand-in-hand with keeping your house clean. A clean home is an inhospitable environment for cockroaches. Restrict where you cook and eat food to certain areas of your home, such as your kitchen and dining room. This way, any crumbs or spilled food will only be in those areas, making it easier to clean up any food in your house. You should also be sure to regularly vacuum, sweep, and mop these areas of the home that are restricted for food consumption.
7. Call for Professional Help
If you’ve followed all of the above tips but still have a cockroach problem in your home, then it’s time you enlist professional help. At Nature’s Balance Pest Control, we’ll help you get rid of your cockroaches by helping you to prevent them. For professional pest control for your home, contact Nature’s Balance today.