i'm so sick of these roaches
So i’ve lived in NYC for the past 11 years and i’ve never had a roach problem. I moved into a relatively large co-op in brooklyn heights in jan. There was a roach problem when i moved in but i refinished the floors, renovated the kitchen and painted the whole thing (well, it’s a small…
So i’ve lived in NYC for the past 11 years and i’ve never had a roach problem. I moved into a relatively large co-op in brooklyn heights in jan. There was a roach problem when i moved in but i refinished the floors, renovated the kitchen and painted the whole thing (well, it’s a small studio but still)..intially the roaches were gone, for a least a good 6 months. needless to say, they have returned. primarily in two sizes, tiny tiny baby sized roaches or a bit smaller than an inch. it’s a big building where an exterminator comes once a month but i don’t want those chemicals in my home. I put down boric acid and roach motels. i was sitting here reading brownstoner contemplating writing for advice or moral support and literally, tonight about one minute ago, a roach walked across my laptop screen. it sort of put me over the roach edge and i decided to write. thought? ideas? how do i get rid of these f#$@ers? i can’t take it anymore.
Don’t know, but sounds horrible. Our roach problem subsided somewhat when we got a new upstairs neighbor who lets in the exterminator and now it’s not so bad. Hope you live happily roach free in Maine.
Hello all. I just discovered this site today, when I did a search for how to get rid of roaches living/breeding… (gross!) in my laptop. I live in Phoenix, but plan to move back to Maine by August. We will be flying, and leaving almost everything behind… EXCEPT my laptop, of course. I don’t want to move any roaches with us!
I’ve lived in an Apt. here for about 4 years. About 1-1/2 years ago, a neighbor on one side of me abandoned her apt., and even left two dogs there to live with their own feces, etc., until I called for help for the dogs, when it seemed they might have been left there alone. Then I got a look at the place, and it was a total filthy disaster. But we still had few if any roaches. It was when the managers cleaned that apt. … then all of their roaches came over here. TWO kinds, even!!!
During that time, I had an overnight caretaker for my son, who has a disabillity. So I had a pair of eyes to watch and report to me in the morning what was going on with the roaches at night, while I was sleeping. She first started working for us just about the time the neighbors left. She saw, when she first arrived, that we had hardly any roaches. She witnessed with me, how (after the discovery of the abandoned dogs/apt.,) we quickly had more and more roaches within a few days. Then after the apt. was cleaned, WOW… our apt. was infested! So I searched and searched via the internet, and found a recipe for “Heloise’s Famous Roach Paste”. It is an attractant (much like “Combat” and other such poisons, they eat, carry back to their nests, and then they are all supposed to die.)
So, I mixed up a batch of this boric acid-based stuff, and followed the directions in the recipe: “Place a glob of this paste everywhere you see roaches”. So I did. At this time, roaches came out at night, in the kitchen, bathroom and living room; but there were none in either of the bedrooms – where I keep and use my laptop. I put globs of this stuff under the kitchen table, around the stove, refrigerator, around where the garbage container is, behind the couches, between the ceiling and top of the wall in the LR, where it seemed they were nesting… EVERWHERE I had seen them. It didn’t occur to me at the time that, as an attractant first, then a killer, they would seem to get much worse before they started to diminish. I had just imagined them eating the stuff and dying – away from me, with their relatives, away somewhere hidden, in their nests – never to be seen again. Well, that is not exactly what happened. Within a day or so after I globbed this stuff all over the place, they all came OUT of their comfy nests, to get to the stuff… I really put a lot of it out – and even in a few places I just didn’t want to see them EVER!!! For a good week or two they came out in droves to dine on the buffet I’d conveniently laid out for them. The kitchen and LR floors crawled with them at night… (my poor dear caretaker!)
Finally they started to become more and more sparse, and every day we witnessed fewer and fewer of them crawling around, and more and more dead/dying ones.
For several months, I didn’t see many at all. I went to my neighbors’ (on the other side) about 6 months ago. Her teenage son was making ramin noodles. Roaches were crawling up and down the walls around the stove, and everywhere I looked. It was around dusk, and rather dim. …
The creepy little freakers are back again, with a vengence. My place is not dirty, but has become a lot more cluttered since back when my story started, about 1-1/2 years ago. It turns out, they don’t just love to eat and drink, but simply LIVE among clutter. I have many books and many cluttered paper in my room. I keep seeing babies coming out of my computer… day and night. I am terrified to lay out any trap/bait again, because I cannot stand the idea of them coming out of their hiding places in my BEDROOM, on my bed, walls, etc., while I’m sleeping… even if this would only be short-term, until they started dying. Luckily, I will be moving in a couple of months, but I DO NOT want to bring them with me. I read once about puting a laptop in the freezer to kill them, but I forgot the details, and it doesn’t seem to be posted anymore. Does anyone know how FOR SURE to get them out of all the tiny little spaces in my laptop?
Good luck to all who find themselves in this horrific situation.
@sirk98 maybe four family doesn’t count, but we haven’t seen a single roach in at least three years.
Also, I’ve heard spiders and centipedes are 2 of the only effective predators against roaches, so if you see either of those guys running around your home, try to look away and not smoosh them!
When we moved in to our place, we also discovered (to our chagrin) that the folks who lived there were less than clean in terms of living standards… Even the DISHWASHER was infested (and thrown out)
After a month of sanitizing the kitchen & bath, having the exterminator in and refinishing/sealing floors and painting/sealing walls we seem to have the problem fairly contained
My philosophy is: roaches are part of life in any urban area. You can (and absolutely SHOULD) have the exterminator in to control it, but you will never be completely free of roaches in any multi-family dwelling.
When I had that kind of problem many years ago, I paid for the people both above & below me (who were elderly & poor) to have the exterminator & my next door neighbors did the same. It worked wonderfully well.
I have the simplest and cheapest method, given to me by an exterminator.
We had regular roach visits that didn’t seem to be doing any good. The exterminator said that roaches don’t need any food (they’ll just eat each other) but the one thing they can’t live without is WATER. Get rid of their water supply and the roaches will go somewhere else.
He said to pour a capful of that Mistolin stuff ($1 at the dollar store-it’s a floor cleaner in Vanilla or Lavender or Apple or other assorted scents) down all our drains after each use (I keep a bottle in the bathroom and a bottle by the kitchen sink). And don’t leave any water out (so no soaking dishes, no glasses of water on the counter, etc). Within a week we saw a noticible difference. After a month the roaches just stayed away.
The combat trays work great too. It is not messy. Get a few boxes of the trays and place them all around the apartment. They work great. We just had a tenant move out from a 4 family building that we own, and they were real pigs! They left such a mess, and the kitchen was infested with roaches. It’s been about 3 weeks since we put the trays down, and most of the roaches are gone. Needless to say, we’re still cleaning up. Honestly, I don’t know how people live in such filth!
Denton — don’t worry, we only have guests in the winter. š