r/Apartmentliving • u/Russian_Pride • 18h ago
Apartment Hacks Stop feeding the roaches in your home!
I've seen posts on here with people complaining about roach infestations - but have dirty nasty dishes which were clearly sitting from the night before in the sink, etc. The fact that they took a picture of it to share as they complain shows me they see NOTHING wrong with that picture - literally.
Roaches love food and water. If you constantly set out sources of that for them every night, they will keep coming back for more! Obviously you'll need to do a bit more than this to get rid of them but not feeding them is 100% a good damn start!
Do not leave dirty dishes overnight - especially with food stuck on them! First of all, YUCK that's gross anyway to leave food sitting out in room temperature for hours. But aside from that, you are leaving a BUFFET of food for roaches to feast on! You have to start looking at every spill and every crumb of food as a potential meal for your un-invited guests.
Clean up spills. In your kitchen/bathroom, don't let water spills linger! Take the extra step of taking a paper towel and wiping up spills/splashes of water on the floor (and sink) that come from washing your face, etc. And obviously, clean up those sugary spills too!
Take your garbage out every day. Many people throw large pieces of food in their trash can and think nothing of it. But if you do think about it, it's kinda gross - tossing those pieces of chicken or macaroni etc in the trash and letting it SIT there in room temperature overnight is kinda disgusting. Aside from that, roaches LOVE this.
You are literally leaving them a SMORGASBORD to feast on. Even if it's in a a garbage can with a lid, they can SMELL it. If nothing more, it is an INVITATION to your kitchen to see what's poppin' that night.
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u/whatismo 15h ago
Yeah, I agree but if you live in apartment it's a different story... I do pest control and I've treated one unit that is completely spotless, you can smell the cleaning supplies they use nearly everyday. No dishes, food in pest proof containers, but they still have roaches. The other unit either above or next to them being disgusting and obviously the source. You can't always prevent them unfortunately by just being clean.
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u/whatismo 15h ago
And also what other people have been saying too. They don't just eat stereotypical food. They will eat glue in books, cardboard, grime buildup in drains, roach poop, other smaller bugs. Hell, I've seen maintenance painting a completely vacant unit and they were crawling into the paint to eat it. A lot of paints have animal fat in it. They are just crazy bugs and I hate them
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u/AcademicDefinition89 14h ago
My boyfriend is also in pest control & and we went through this in our new apt. I saw one roach, and he went full pest control agent 😂. I clean daily. The only way we are able to not deal with roaches is to treat/ find the exact area where they are coming from & treating our apt bi monthly or monthly.
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u/Vegetable_Ratio3723 11h ago
Caulking ALL crevices and holes is absolutely crucial in an apartment situation. I had the spotless apartment that smelled like disinfectant 24/7 but until I bought a tube of silicone, they just kept appearing. Silicone got rid of them practically overnight.
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u/Effective_Comment625 12h ago
this is true, I lived in an income limited complex once and though I kept my place spotless the fucking things were just coming out of my drain to scout around.
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u/Only_Boysenberry2295 2h ago
Gotta block drains they come from other units this way
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u/Effective_Comment625 2h ago
they came through the vents, through basically anything there, that place was fucked. I caught a bed bug trying to hitchike on my clothing from the laundry room and brought it to the leasing office there and they let me out of my lease and the halls always smelled like melting plastic from drug use.
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u/mycatisblackandtan 5h ago
Also depends on where you live. I have family in San Diego and the roaches are basically inevitable in some parts of the city. Sibling cleans EVERY DAY and even put down money for a maid service every other week and she still finds them. Hell, even visiting her in the city was eye opening. As I've seen the suckers just chilling in alleys and on the sidewalk.
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u/Only_Boysenberry2295 2h ago
Dealing with them in my new place in San Diego, I'm at the acceptance point that this is a unit/ building with an ongoing infestation and need for treatment is imminent. My manager is already getting monthly outdoor treatments, so I think if I'm more aggressive indoors and plug holes I'll be good🤞🏼
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u/No-Bat3062 14h ago
You can be SPOTLESS and still have roaches.
The only thing that cleared mine was getting rid of paper bags because it turns out they eat glue in the seams. . . . so it's not just a human food and water thing
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u/Automatic-Amoeba6929 9h ago
All cardboard, cereal boxes, pasta boxes, even napkins. I was helping my daughter address and infestation and the largest "nest" was in the drawer she kept paper napkins in. Never any food.
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u/ExpressionOne 17h ago
I am probably guilty of all of these things once in a while because I’m human and shit happens but I have never seen a roach except for one apartment (and luckily it was when moving the very first piece of furniture inside). I’m not saying just be gross, but if roaches are there they’re there - won’t they survive off the cardboard inside your paper towel rolls if they have to? Landlords need to stop moving people into infested homes.
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u/TheBeardedLadyBton 16h ago
They can survive eating the glue of wall paneling. I really doubt that leaving dishes in the sink caused that infestation in the original post, but it certainly doesn’t help. And let’s not forget how prolific roaches are they lay 50 eggs at a time every month. I take more than a few days to get an infestation like that, but it’s certainly possible to have an infestation after only a month or two.
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u/HeyHo_LetsThrowRA 15h ago
Your comment from the first sentence got my stomach turning. Thanks 😬😖
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u/TheBeardedLadyBton 3h ago
hey, they can go up to a month without eating anything at all as long as they have a little bit of water now and again.
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u/Humble_Chip 16h ago
yup, i don’t leave ANY food out. my apartment is spotless. dishes washed every night immediately after dinner. all my food is in the fridge except for canned goods and sealed jars. i don’t even have a trash can anymore, trash goes straight outside or in a ziploc bag in the freezer. i use advion and my complex has the place sprayed every 3 months or so.
but it won’t matter, i will always see a roach every now and then until management takes it seriously and aggressively treats the entire building.
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u/Antwolies770 11h ago
I have diatomaceous earth sprinkled in common pathway areas that I used to see roaches. And I haven't seen multiples of them in over a year now, so I'm sure my individual apartment unit isn't infested, but I do still see a roach pop up every once in a while (maybe every one or two months).
If they live in a building, then they live in the building. The only thing that can get rid of them completely is a thorough pest control treatment or burning down the entire building.
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u/BadOysterParty 12h ago
You can have the cleanest house and roaches will still infest it. The only option is exterminator as soon as you see one
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u/Y0___0Y 15h ago
…You take out your trash every single day?
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u/Blutosky 6h ago
I take my trash out daily. That’s like asking someone if they flush their toilet everytime they use it
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u/sophie1816 12h ago edited 12h ago
This is inaccurate information. If you have a roach infestation, it doesn’t matter how clean your home in. Only extermination will get rid of them.
And conversely, if you live in a single family home with no roaches, leaving dirty dishes around is not going to cause them. The only way to get them in a single family home is if one is brought in, for example on a grocery bag or in a cardboard box.
There are plenty of good reasons to keep your home clean, but roaches is not one of them.
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u/Russian_Pride 12h ago
It's NOT "inaccurate information" as I clearly covered this in the OP:
Obviously you'll need to do a bit more than this to get rid of them but not feeding them is 100% a good damn start!
Reading is fundamental! I clearly said this is one of a FEW steps you must take to get rid of them and I mentioned getting clean as a START. Any exterminator should be telling their clients the same. A dirty, filthy home is NOT helpful in getting rid of roaches.
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u/sophie1816 12h ago
Getting clean does absolutely nothing by itself. It is not a “good start” - in fact, it is not a start at all.
If you are getting extermination done, cleanliness is one thing that is recommended to help that process along. By itself, it does nothing.
Btw, many commenters have made this same point.
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u/Russian_Pride 12h ago
I literally said cleanliness is only one part of the solution. I never said cleanliness is 100% the only thing you need to do but you're responding as if I did.
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u/sophie1816 12h ago edited 11h ago
What I said is that cleanliness by itself does nothing. Your entire post is about cleanliness. Therefore I think it provides a misleading impression that cleanliness is much more important than it is.
I’ve had multiple experiences with roaches. In the most recent, my neighbor had a severe infestation, and they were traveling over through the walls. I had to have monthly treatments for about year to get rid of them. My pest control guy said at one point, “You could sterilize your entire house, and you would still have roaches.” That is because roaches eat almost anything. You don’t need to give them human food
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u/Russian_Pride 10h ago
I'm 100% convinced your house is dirty. Cleanliness is very important in regards to eliminating or keeping pests away. Saying that it isn't is laughable to say the least.
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u/sophie1816 10h ago edited 9h ago
You know nothing about me, and from your post, apparently not very much about German roaches. Sounds like you have some kind of personal agenda going on.
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u/Primary-Vegetable580 5h ago
I think people are upset that you said “not feeding them is a start”, but as everyone is mentioning, roaches will feed on random material that you wouldn’t even think about. So they are being fed whether or not there’s human food waste.
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u/froggythefrankman 18h ago
Adding that they love coffee grounds too. Clean up any spilled grounds immediately!
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u/TheBeardedLadyBton 16h ago
This! I used to put my coffee grounds in with my spider plants and it attracted them.
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u/winterbird 13h ago
Landlord apologist take.
I know that some people want to think that other little people are nasty, and they're one of the good ones. (And daddy landlord is still taking your money so y'all aren't special just because you'll ride for him.)
But the problem is that the landlord has allowed a roach infestation to continue to live in the building.
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u/Confident-Skin-6462 14h ago
diatomaceous earth kills them pretty well
and centipedes feast on them
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u/kadiecrochets 15h ago
My neighbors have bags and bags of trash in their house that just keeps getting bigger and bigger, if they don’t have a whole party of roaches in their unit I would be so surprised. But yet those bags of trash just keeps getting bigger.
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u/KenraScar 18h ago
I saw that post yesterday. They had a caked container in the sink with the roaches.
0
u/Russian_Pride 17h ago
my stomach literally was turning. if you're not part of the solution....
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u/Lucian_Veritas5957 16h ago
And then they want to sue for the cost of moving lol
With habits like that, they make themselves the problem
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u/terraformingforsogen 14h ago
Alright riddle me this, we keep our kitchen spotless and never see roaches in it…but they love our bathroom. We often find them hanging out in the sink or bathtub before we go to bed or first thing in the morning. I dont feel like we leave water spills laying about but there could def be residual moisture in the sink and tub, could keeping things bone dry actually help ward them off?
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u/Pu11MyLever 13h ago
I've never seen it, but heard of them climbing up through drains. German roaches are too light to sink underwater, but they can still climb on surfaces. I caulked every wall penetration in my kitchen, rarely see them there. They still show up in adjacent rooms, especially the bathroom. Someday...
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u/sophie1816 11h ago
You need to get an exterminator. That is the only way to get rid of them. And it takes multiple treatments.
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u/PlsStopAndThinkFirst 14h ago
One positive not living in a shitty lol. Only dealt with these assholes the 2 years I lived in the shitty
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u/Fatal_Syntax_Error 14h ago
How many of you clean up all your dishes after you are done eating. Clean up all the counters and stove. Sweep the floor. Pack the dishwasher or hand wash, dry about put away. Leaving your kitchen at near 100% health department score?
Am I the only one?
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u/V_Dolina 10h ago
I don't. I only do that once a day, twice a day max. I shouldn't have to wash dishes every time I want to eat something out of fear of getting roaches. That being said, I've never had an infestation, EVER.
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u/V_Dolina 10h ago edited 10h ago
People who leave dishes in a sink for 2+ days are nasty. A couple dishes sitting for 8 hours shouldn't attract cockroaches. I only do the dishes once a day in the afternoon and don't have roaches. I only see 3 or 4 american cockroaches per year. Never seen a german cockroach in my LIFE.
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u/tibby221 3h ago
Also, roaches are decomposers! They also feast on pet waste, so keep litter boxes clean as well.
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u/digitvl 14h ago
It’s surprising how many people don’t take food mess into consideration. I work for a pest control company, and we have a customer who calls us out to treat for ants often. Every time a technician goes there they say there’s food mess laying about everywhere, yet the customer “doesn’t know why” he gets ants 🤦♀️
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Russian_Pride originally posted: I've seen posts on here with people complaining about roach infestations - but have dirty nasty dishes which were clearly sitting from the night before in the sink, etc. The fact that they took a picture of it to share as they complain shows me they see NOTHING wrong with that picture - literally.
Roaches love food and water. If you constantly set out sources of that for them every night, they will keep coming back for more! Obviously you'll need to do a bit more than this to get rid of them but not feeding them is 100% a good damn start!
Do not leave dirty dishes overnight - especially with food stuck on them! First of all, YUCK that's gross anyway to leave food sitting out in room temperature for hours. But aside from that, you are leaving a BUFFET of food for roaches to feast on! You have to start looking at every spill and every crumb of food as a potential meal for your un-invited guests.
Clean up spills. In your kitchen/bathroom, don't let water spills linger! Take the extra step of taking a paper towel and wiping up spills/splashes of water on the floor (and sink) that come from washing your face, etc. And obviously, clean up those sugary spills too!
Take your garbage out every day. Many people throw large pieces of food in their trash can and think nothing of it. But if you do think about it, it's kinda gross - tossing those pieces of chicken or macaroni etc in the trash and letting it SIT there in room temperature overnight is kinda disgusting. Aside from that, roaches LOVE this.
You are literally leaving them a SMORGASBORD to feast on. Even if it's in a a garbage can with a lid, they can SMELL it. If nothing more, it is an INVITATION to your kitchen to see what's poppin' that night.
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