Kill cockroaches that hide in your appliances.
Roaches like warm, tight spaces, making the small crevices in appliances attractive to these pests. Roaches sometimes enter houses by riding in appliances. During infestations, they often use appliances as hiding places, especially in moist areas. Some common appliances where you can find roaches include stoves, refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers. You can't reach the small spaces in appliances and you can't spray insecticide in appliances where you store or process food and eating utensils. However, some methods exist for you to kill the roaches.
Instructions
1. Inspect behind, under and inside appliances using a flashlight and a small mirror. Look for living or dead roaches, shed exoskeletons, egg cases and droppings that usually resemble grains of pepper. Otherwise, enter a dark room, turn on the lights and mentally note the roaches' hiding places as they scamper to hide.
2. Vacuum roaches and their debris from the appliances and discard the vacuum cleaner bag outside. This reduces roach populations and cleans the appliances. Scrub on, around, underneath and behind appliances, making sure to remove all roach droppings because they can attract other roaches.
3. Puff boric acid dusts under and behind large appliances such as the refrigerator or washing machine to form a thin layer on surfaces. When a roach walks over the layer, boric acid sticks to its body. The boric acid becomes ingested when the roach grooms itself, slowly killing the roach from inside. Boric acid works as a stomach poison for the roach, but it is safe for people and pets. Other dusts include silica and diatomaceous earth, which destroy the waxy coating of the roaches, drying them out and killing them.
4. Place infested small appliances such as toaster or radio in individual plastic bags, seal the bags and place them in the freezer overnight. The roaches in the appliances will die from the cold.
5. Place sticky traps of jar traps near appliances where you have seen the roaches. Although they often hide in appliances, roaches will eventually come out to forage. Traps will help reduce roach populations, but usually can't eliminate the infestation on their own.
6. Place insecticidal baits near appliances where the roaches have eaten before. Baits take several weeks to reduce populations because some will directly eat the bait, while others will eat the dead roach bodies or the droppings. Don't use pesticides or household cleaners near the baits because they can keep roaches away from the area. Active ingredients of roach baits include abamectin, boric acid, fipronil, hydramenthylnon and sulfluramid.
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