There isn’t a corner in your home that hasn’t been raided by the filthy roaches. You take the lid off a long time-unused cooker, and the first thing that pops out of it is a cockroach stubbornly detecting the air before it. Cockroaches are omniscient, they crawl out of nowhere, from unsuspecting hideouts such as your gas cylinder cabin, to where you store trash, worse still from the wash basin screw, or your clothes cupboard.
You keep a Hit spray handy, but by the time you can paralyse the darned creature, it has already made tracks for a new location. Hapless you try matching its speed, but eventually give up. It is a well-known fact that cockroaches are not the best of domestic pests to have around, for they are carrier of germs and diseases particularly when they come in contact with edible objects. From food poisoning to diarrhoea, the ills of contaminated food are one too many. One of the most resilient beings on the planet, a cockroach is immune to radiation and can go without food for over a month. Another reason you find them just about anywhere is because they are omnivores as they feed on both plant food and animals. But what makes them toxic for your home really is the chemical traces they leave through their stool, which helps them easily find sources of water or food.
Don’t give up hope just yet, or wait for the pest control guy to make his monthly visit, you are yourself fully equipped to get rid of cockroaches from your home, and retain the health and hygiene of your family members. This is the most effective DIY if you have young children or pets at home, as there won’t be any danger from poisoning.
Cockroaches run miles away from our popular kitchen ingredient ‘Bay leaves’!
It can be safely dubbed the world’s best cockroach repellent as cockroaches find the smell of bay leaves intolerable and run away from them. Of course the herb doesn’t kill cockroaches, but at least drives them away.
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How about placing small branches of bay leaves in every nook and cranny of your home, from near the trash can to food storage boxes, behind your refrigerator, cupboards, to just anywhere you think they might be making themselves a cosy home.
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Be generous with the quantity, more the leaves, better repelled will your domestic cockroaches be. You can use dry or fresh bay leaves, both are as effective. Although you can do better by taking a bunch of dry bay leaves and grinding them into a powder, further sprinkling them in suspected places of cockroach habitation. The smell of powdered bay leaves is much stronger and sharper than the leaf in its whole.
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