Man fights cockroaches with varying success. Each mind-blowing total poison he invented, which kills thousands of insects in the first year after release, ceases to act on the pest’s body after 2-3 years.
Now cockroaches are leaving human homes in large numbers for unknown reasons. The man has not become any better - he still scatters crumbs on the table and is too lazy to wipe up the water in the kitchen at night.
Tenants are leaving because:
- do not know how to deal with massive radiation;
- their stomach does not allow them to digest the plastic packaging in which people know how to wrap their food;
- they have not yet learned to cope with long-acting poisons;
- they do not like genetically modified food and the abundance of preservatives.
The annoying “neighbors” are leaving for now, but they will definitely return in a few years, having successfully mastered all the homework assigned by the person.
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In order not to make a personal contribution to the breeding of especially resistant specimens of the cockroach tribe, you can effectively use folk remedies, which do not become addictive.
How unpleasant odors affect cockroaches
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All means that a person uses to fight cockroaches are divided into:
- insecticides or killing substances;
- repellents or deterrents;
- traps into which parasites attracted by the smell of food fall.
In apartments that are not infested with insects, repellents that do not cause addiction can be quite successfully used.
Their action is based on the vital functions of insects: the transmission of messages within the cockroach family is carried out by odors.
The scheme for parasites to explore new spaces is quite civilized - a couple of particularly nimble pioneer specimens are sent to explore.
The “smelling” marks left by the “scouts” indicate the path to water and food for the rest of the relatives - and after a while the surprised owner of the apartment discovers new tenants.
If odors are detected in the room that are stronger than cockroach marks, the pests become disoriented.
This makes their life much more difficult, and if the smell in the home persists constantly, they leave.
Cleanliness comes first!
Household insects feed on food waste, garbage, and dirt. When starting the fight against parasites, you need to clean the room. Wash all hard-to-reach places with detergent
Much attention should be paid to the bathroom and kitchen
All products must be stored in closed containers, making sure there are no crumbs. Be sure to regularly take out the garbage and not hoard packaging; cockroaches will find something to eat there. You need to move the refrigerator, wash the floor underneath it, preferably with ammonia added to the water (cockroaches do not like its pungent smell).
More than food, house pests need water. You should try to leave the kitchen sink dry. The lack of water on tables, in the bathroom, on the floor will force cockroaches to look for another habitat. Maintaining cleanliness will protect your home from uninvited tenants.
Advantages of essential oils in the fight against insects
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People have known for several thousand years that plants contain substances that provide their scent.
They learned to isolate these compounds long before they studied their properties and came up with a name for each of them.
Essential, or volatile oils, are produced by plants of 90 families. Interestingly, the same plant can contain several types of oils that are extracted from different parts of it. Three types of aromas are extracted from one orange tree.
Volatile oils are a complex mixture of various organic compounds, the main ones being terpenes.
Their smell and properties depend both on the type of plant and on the climatic conditions of its growth and extraction technology. The storage method is important - the smell of turpentine can be clearly heard in rancid oils.
Oils are used as medicine, used in everyday life, as a cleaning and disinfectant.
The right combination of oils and solvent (hot water or alcohol) will create an effective repellent against cockroaches.
Volatile oils have the following benefits in insect control:
- not harmful to children, elderly people and pets;
- lightweight and easy to use;
- cheap;
- show a long-lasting effect;
- with a certain selection, they have a healing effect on people living in the apartment.
Essential oils have the ability to cleanse a room:
- lavender;
- mint;
- tea tree;
- lemon;
- geraniums;
- ate from needles.
The aromas of clove, thyme, lemon, sage, and lavender can influence bacteria both on human skin and indoors.
With the help of certain aromas you can repel not only cockroaches - they are equally disliked by ants, moths, bedbugs and fleas.
First and important steps
There are a huge number of recipes and methods of fighting cockroaches with folk remedies, surprising in their originality of application and variety of composition. But before you begin to consider and use them, you need to try to create uncomfortable living conditions for harmful insects.
Start the fight against cockroaches by cleaning your home
To do this, you should first cut off the pests’ path to water and sterilize all objects in the room. Such an environment will become unbearable for them. So, the first and important actions of owners who are bothered by cockroaches in the house should be:
- Wet cleaning. It is necessary to thoroughly wash the objects in the house using cleaning products: baseboards, window sills, shelves, floors, cabinets, drawers, sofas, etc. Be sure to wipe everything dry after wet cleaning, since cockroaches love water. One drop left by chance can quench their thirst.
- The next action should be aimed at blocking insects' access to food. To do this, products available in the kitchen or other rooms should be sealed and stored as far away as possible.
Of course, it’s not as difficult to wash and hide everything as to do it absolutely. That is why it is recommended to use a store-bought or folk remedy for cockroaches to ensure that you forget about the pests. It is also useful to periodically do preventive maintenance in the home.
Disadvantages of Essential Oils
The ability of plant aromas to only repel insects narrows their scope of application, but this cannot be considered a disadvantage, it is only a feature.
To more completely clean a room, these products should be used in combination with insecticides of synthetic or natural origin.
Volatile oils have high and versatile biological activity, and have a strong effect on the body:
- calm or stimulate the nervous system;
- normalize blood vessels and relieve spasms;
- can cause severe allergic reactions.
The wrong oil or a combination of oils can cause an unexpected reaction in the inhabitants of the apartment, especially if children, pregnant women or elderly people live in it.
The smell can be a strong irritant, even in small doses causing irritation, headaches, and shortness of breath in sensitive people.
One such remedy is lemongrass oil. If you use it for a long time, you will experience a sharp deterioration in health in patients with hypertension, children and pregnant women.
Essential oils should be stored in special, tightly closed vials in a dark place protected from the sun. Children or pets should not have access to them.
You need to be especially careful when using essential oils in a room where cats live. It is for them that most of these products are toxic, so you should not drip them on the floor.
Simultaneous and separate use of funds
Lemon and cloves can be used together, separately from each other. This will not affect the result
It is important to ensure that the aroma is constantly strong. Don't forget to update the spices or lemon
To repel mosquitoes, stick a clove into half a lemon. Perhaps this method will be effective in the fight against domestic cockroaches.
Separately, clove oil can be dripped onto an open fire, for example, into a fireplace or onto a candle fire. The aroma will be pleasant to humans, but not to domestic insects. In this way, you can get rid of cockroaches, mosquitoes, and flies.
Lemon slices placed in grocery cabinets will drive away cockroaches forever. Even if the lemons are already dry (but not moldy), you don’t have to remove them; they work against pests for a long time.
Cockroaches are very tenacious creatures, capable of quickly adapting to unfavorable environmental conditions. All means are good against them. Whether to use them simultaneously or separately is up to everyone to decide for themselves.
It is important not to stop fighting, constantly change the means so that the parasites do not become addicted
Albina N., Penza:
“I didn’t encounter cockroaches, then we bought an apartment. There were a lot of them in it. I had to get rid of it and find different ways. It’s probably better to drive out insects with lemon and cloves than with ammonia. Because after ammonia you want to leave on your own. Pleasant smells, even if harsh, are still better. Now I will know about such methods. Moreover, you can drip oil into the aroma lamp.”
Properties of essential oils and their features in the fight against cockroaches
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Essential oils with notes of lemon, mint, and geranium are unpleasant for insects. You can buy them in pharmacies and perfume stores.
To work, you need to buy the drug only from trusted manufacturers, with a good shelf life.
For cockroach repellents, you can use essential oils of many plants - cedar, mint, anise, eucalyptus and many others.
Citronella
This oil has nothing to do with citrus fruits; it is obtained from the leaves of the herbaceous plant of the same name. Used as a fragrance for cosmetics and hygiene products, in pharmacology.
Lemongrass
The drug is used in cosmetology and is used for the production of household chemicals. It has a strong antiseptic effect and is used in a number of compositions for disinfecting premises. An excellent remedy for combating all types of household insects.
Vetiveria
The oil of the plant, originally from India, is used as a fragrance for the production of cosmetics and hygiene products; its soothing and antibacterial properties are used in medicine. Volatile substances from vetiver are included in home remedies to repel crawling parasites.
Tea tree
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The essential oil of the plant is used as a powerful disinfectant - its smell repels all types of domestic flying and crawling domestic parasites (cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes) and human parasites - worms and demodex skin mites, lice and nits. The reason is the composition of the oil; it has a rich molecular composition.
To make the effect of aromas more effective, when composing a remedy against cockroaches, lavender and clove, lemon or orange oils are added to it.
In medicine, tea tree product is used as an anti-inflammatory, bactericidal and antiseptic agent.
This property allows the product to be included in ointments for the treatment of wounds and skin inflammations. Long-term use of the product strengthens the human immune system.
To treat the premises, use spraying hot water with added oil (10-15 drops per 500 grams of water), washing surfaces with the addition of 10-15 drops of the product per bucket of water.
Eucalyptus
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The yellow or green oil of the plant with a pungent minty odor is used by official medicine as a component of many warming cold ointments and anti-inflammatory sprays.
Eucalyptus oil destroys tuberculosis bacilli indoors, treats some sexually transmitted diseases, and stops the development of pathogenic microorganisms.
Eucalyptus leaves have an extremely high content of essential substances - it can easily be considered a record holder among essential plants.
The main active ingredient of eucalyptus oil is a composition similar to Cineole, which greatly irritates the cockroach's sense of smell (eucalyptol). The same substance is found in laurel leaves, sage and rosemary.
Fir
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This tree is the raw material for the production of turpentine and camphor; fir oil has an antibacterial and warming effect.
Used in folk medicine for pain relief and wound healing, for warming ointments.
The antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effect of the oil allows it to be used to treat chronic diseases, inflammation of joints and muscles.
The aroma of fir restores the balance of the central nervous system, increases the body's immune defense, and helps relieve irritability and headaches.
Fir oil has the property of aromatizing the air in a room and purifying it of harmful bacteria and parasitic insects and mites.
Blood-sucking parasites are most sensitive to it; cockroaches do not like it either.
To prepare the repellent, combine 500 grams of water, 50 grams of vodka and at least 25 drops of fir oil.
The mixture is sprayed, especially carefully treating areas of possible penetration and feeding of insects.
The product is not recommended for use in rooms where pregnant women or small children live, or people suffering from high blood pressure.
Like all similar products, it cannot be used if anyone in the family is individually sensitive to the aromas of pine needles.
Geranium
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The indoor potted plant is familiar to everyone - it is grown in almost all apartments. They learned to extract their oil in the 18th century and use it in perfumery and medicine.
The most pungent smell is of pink geranium, which is used on an industrial scale.
Rose geranium oil has a pronounced antimicrobial effect; it can cleanse a room and act as an antidepressant and an effective pain reliever.
You can buy essential oil, or you can make it yourself. To do this, pour a glass of chopped stems, flowers and leaves of geranium into a glass of vodka or alcohol and expose it to the sun for 20 days.
After this, add ½ cup of olive oil to the mixture and continue to infuse for 15 days, filter and store in a closed container with an airtight stopper.
To treat the premises, mix a tablespoon of the product with a glass of hot water and spray the areas where cockroaches may enter.
Mint
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The main substance that determines the smell and taste of mint is menthol. The product has a pronounced antimicrobial effect, the list of its beneficial effects on the body is very impressive.
When sprayed indoors, it has a beneficial effect on the body - it calms, relieves headaches, normalizes blood pressure, heart rate, and improves the functioning of the central nervous system.
Menthol has a repellent effect on cockroaches - this can be spread out mint stems, potted plants on the windowsill, or spraying an aqueous solution of essential oil indoors.
You should not use menthol if there are people in the house with low blood pressure, intolerance to mint, or children under three years of age. It is believed that the smell of mint prevents conception, reducing a man's sexual performance.
Lavender
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The plant oil is a recognized fragrance for the manufacture of cosmetics and household chemicals. In medicine, it is used to make ointments that restore blood circulation, as a strong sedative.
Insects - moths and cockroaches - are afraid of the smell of lavender; it is used in folk medicine to expel worms and to relieve the effects of bites from poisonous spiders and snakes.
The smell of lavender oil normalizes a person’s mental and emotional state, relieving the effects of stress, neuroses and depression, creates internal harmony, and allows one to recover from prolonged fatigue.
Lavender essential oil is used in conjunction with tea tree, clove and lemon oils to treat rooms against cockroaches.
Kedrovoe
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Volatile cedar oil normalizes a person’s general condition, creates a positive mood, relieves fatigue, and increases blood circulation.
The substance is used to make cosmetics that are effective against skin rashes, blemishes and irritations. When sprayed indoors, it creates a feeling of comfort and tranquility.
Anise
Anise oil is used in the food industry for baking, making vodka products, and in the confectionery industry.
In medicine it is used to regulate the activity of the gastrointestinal tract, as a diuretic, carminative and antimicrobial agent.
The sharp sweetish smell of anise oil is used to repel insects - flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches.
Carnation
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The main active ingredient of the oil with a specific pungent odor is eugenol. The antibacterial properties of cloves have been known since the Middle Ages - they were used by doctors for personal protection when treating patients with severe infections.
Included in many dental preparations, it is considered a powerful sexual stimulant.
Essential clove oil is used to regulate the gastrointestinal tract in the presence of inflammatory processes, treat skin diseases (scabies), even tuberculosis.
Spraying indoors can lift the mood of those living in the house, clear the air of pathogenic bacteria, and repel insects from the home.
Chemical substances
Not only natural but also some chemical odors repel cockroaches. Insects cannot stand it if the rooms smell of ammonia or boric alcohol, kerosene or turpentine
However, these pungent odors in high concentrations are harmful and poorly tolerated by people, and therefore require extreme caution when using
Of the listed substances, ammonia (ammonia) or chlorine is most often used, which are mixed with water used for cleaning premises. You can simply pour ammonia into a saucer and leave it in a secluded place. Alcohol fumes will be harmful to cockroaches.
Boric acid, which has the ability to kill insects, is added to special food baits.
In addition to household products, you can use chemicals specially designed to combat cockroaches. Their action is based on the effect of toxic insecticidal vapors on animals. Moreover, the composition of the drugs is designed in such a way that a person does not feel an unpleasant odor, as happens when using ammonia or gasoline.
If you use chemical products, strictly adhere to the dosages indicated on the label, assessing the level of contamination in advance so that you can apply the most correct dosage.
Cockroach chalks have been on the market for decades, but they remain just as effective against parasites. To get rid of cockroaches for a long time, you can use this old-fashioned method.
Aerosols
There are many insecticides on the market that contain cyfluthrin, which is very effective in getting rid of cockroaches completely. This includes aerosols and sprays. Spray the insecticide in roach hiding places such as wall cracks, vents, drainage areas, trash can, etc.
Fumigation
This method allows you to get into wall voids and other places where cockroaches might be hiding and can be used throughout your home. And most importantly, it is a quick solution that does not require several subsequent visits to specialists to ensure the complete destruction of all cockroaches in the structure.
If your home or apartment is experiencing excessive infestation, you may need to use powerful professional pesticides containing chemicals such as cypermethrin. The residual effect of these chemicals will last for at least three months and will kill all kinds of insects in your home.
This product should only be used as a last resort. Do not use this product if you have children or pets at home. Most cockroach prevention or repellent methods available on the market contain harmful chemicals that are hazardous to your health if not used carefully.
Processing rules
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You should use aromatic oils as a preventive measure:
- if single “scouts” are spotted;
- neighbors have cockroaches or in the entrance and the premises are treated with an insecticide;
- there is a suspicion that the insects were brought from friends or from a trip.
There are several ways to treat the premises:
- spraying a mixture of aromatic oils - to do this, mix a cup of hot water, ½ cup of vinegar and 10-15 drops of the mixture (eucalyptus, mint, cloves, tea tree);
- using water with essential oil to wash furniture and floors indoors;
- using aroma lamps (devices where a mixture of water and aromas is heated in a container).
- dripping the mixture into places where cockroaches may live (drawers, corners under sewer pipes and drains, back panels of household appliances, etc.);
- by spraying sinks and drains with an aromatic solution at night.
When choosing an aromatic oil, you need to take into account the individual tolerance of the product and the overall effect on the body.
You may need to make several attempts to find the optimal combination of scents that will be most suitable for a given room.
After some time of constant use of aromatic substances, the air in an apartment or house will, unnoticed by the residents, acquire a special smell that repels insects.
Borax
Borax, like boron powder, is harmless only to pests. Borax is also called the sodium salt of boric acid.
There are some effective recipes for using borax:
- 200 gr. borax mixed with 60 gr. starch, and the same amount of powdered sugar, 30 gr. vanilla and a little water. The mixture should look like a paste. The last ingredient is added to give an attractive aroma.
- You can make a mixture of mashed potatoes and chopped eggs and add borax (about 1 tablespoon) to it. Borax mixtures are used against cockroaches in the same way as poisonous baits with boric acid.
On a note
Cockroach control advocates say you can simply sprinkle boric acid or borax powder around the sink or trash can. Cockroaches will run over the poison and, when cleaning their paws, will swallow the poison.
