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Erin, a reader from North Carolina, asked a pest control related question this week regarding an article about dementia and diabetes being linked to pesticides. She writes:
I wanted to ask you for ideas about pest control. We live in an apartment in NC and are having a roach problem (we’ve been killing 20, mostly babies per day—they are going wild in our kitchen and dining room at night). I don’t want to have our apartment sprayed with toxic pesticides especially because I have a 1 yr old and 3 yr old. I guess I need a pep talk from another natural mama about why I should not spray and some ideas of alternatives. I spray down the kitchen and dining area with an orange oil spray every morning and night to keep things clean and the orange oil is supposed to be a natural repellent. I also put boric acid in the sink before going to bed. I’m sure you know from living in the South how bad roaches can be! Any other tips? I am feeling a lot of pressure from friends and family to spray. One friend almost pleaded with me “for the sake of my family” to get the place sprayed by a professional! Maybe you could write a post about home pest control sometime if you have not written on that already.
Erin, I have written a related post called Green Herbicides and Pesticides for Your Yard, but I have not written one on non-toxic pest control for your home. Thanks for the great idea! Here’s how I keep pests at bay in my home in very buggy Florida!
Non-Toxic Pest Control (Homemade Roach and Ant Cookies)
Makes about 20 cookies
There is simply no need to use a pest control service for spraying toxic pesticides in and around your home to control roaches and ants. A super simple solution is to make homemade roach and ant cookies that last for years. Just be sure to hide them well and keep them away from the kids as they look like real cookies and you wouldn’t want one of your children taking a bite by accident!
We once had a bad roach problem in our old home when we remodeled the kitchen but these cookies took care of the problem within a few days. The roaches begin to decline in number and eventually disappear completely never to be seen again!
Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup white sugar
1 cup borax or boric acid (where to find)
1 egg
Instructions
Mix all ingredients together to form a moist batter. Add a bit of water if more moisture is needed to make a paste. Form small cookies about 1 inch in diameter and place on parchment paper on cookie sheets.
Bake at 350F for about 8-10 minutes. Let cool. Hide cookies in the back of cabinets, in corners on the floor and anywhere else you have roach or ant problems. They work great in garages too!
Store leftover cookies in a plastic ziplock back in an upper cabinet away from children and pets. These cookies last for years and so make enough so that you only have to make this recipe one time!
Other Non-toxic Pest Control Ideas
While these roach and ant cookies work beautifully well for keeping pests out of your home, occasionally I will have some ants trailing under a patio door or around the front porch foraging for food. For these situations, I place a bay leaf right at the same spot the ants are trailing in to repel them away in another direction.
Ants do not like bay leaves – at least the ants in Florida! This simple idea quickly and easily turns the ants around and sends them off foraging away from your house! As for fire ants, they are a different kettle of fish. This article plus video shows how I control them very easily with no pesticides.
That’s it! That’s all I do to keep pests away from my house. Two simple ideas that work. If worse comes to worst and your house is infested with more pests than just roaches or ants, be sure to call a green pest control company to fix the problem. There are two in my local area and they cost anywhere from $300-$500/year depending on the size of your house. Earth’s Best Natural Pest Control Management is one of the biggest in my state of Florida from what I understand, but I’m sure there are many others around the country.
More Information
Natural Flea Infestation and Prevention Solutions
Spider Repellent Guaranteed to Work
Natural and Effective Bed Bug Removal Techniques
Safely Get Rid of Carpenter Ants in a Snap
Fast and Effective Fly Repellent
Quick and Easy Homemade Fly Trap
Fast Acting Mosquito Bite Remedy That’s Probably Already in Your Kitchen
The DE will likely work outdoors around the foundation, but it must be reapplied quite often for the first year or two. It has a tendency to soak into the ground and then it isn’t as effective. We mixed tabasco sauce in with our DE and used it outdoors in front of the patio doors at night and it even worked for red ants. I don’t know about cock roaches because we don’t have those. Not many folks do up here in the hinterlands!
I’m wondering if the “cookie” idea might work better if you didn’t bake them?? I would think the sugar might be more apt to be the killer here and might be better served if it was unheated. Just a thought.
Some more ideas that have worked for us:
-Put some peppermint essential oil or a peppermint tea bag where ants are coming in. They are repelled by mint.
-Spray trails of ants with soapy water in a spray bottle (Dawn dishsoap).
-Buy the No-Poison traps made by Victor (sold on Amazon). These work great for capturing any creepy crawlies in the house, especially roaches and spiders (I like spiders, but I’d rather not have roaches).
-Pour vinegar into ant hills (beware, this will also kill nearby plants).
DE has not worked well for us in our yard (we have lots of ants, and of course they want to be in the kids’ play area).
Hi Sarah, I haven’t tried the vinegar on the ant piles. I will have to try that instead. I’ve been using a tea kettle full of boiling water poured into the hole at the center of the ant pile. One or two tea kettles full of boiling water do the trick every time.
French ants seem not to like cinnamon. I got this tip from an American friend. I dusted it with a teaspoon and strainer along all the French windows and thresholds on the outside, to form a barrier they would have to walk over. No more ants – it was immediate. But needs redoing every couple of weeks (only 5 minutes, and I’d rather not kill them if we can live in peace…!)
We’ve used baby powder to get rid of indoor ants. Just sprinkling it in the cracks where they are getting in and around where they are trailing to. If it gets on them them seem disoriented and they just run around in circles. Love it. And we leave it for a week or so to prevent them from coming back, then just clean up with a vacuum.
How do you stop a 1-year old from eating them if they look like cookies? I suppose you could use food dye to colour them and distinguish them from cookies, but would the bugs still like them and more importantly – is that going to stop a 1-year old?
Hide them up high in cabinets.
Hello!
For mice or bats in homes/garages/attics there is a product out there called “Mouse Magic” or “Bat Magic”… Basically they are bags of mint, that you hang in the location where you are having the problem. The mint smells so strongly that the mice/bats/etc cant handle it and leave.
Another option for rodent and bug (think slugs in particular!) is beer or soda. Most of those creatures are unable to burp or pass gas in the same way humans are so the carbonation in the beer or soda kills them. But that means you are killing them not just repelling.
Ants are very difficult to get rid of because you can’t kill the colony unless you are able to kill the queen. She is often between 2 and 10 feet below the surface and is very difficult to kill. For most pests, oil or soap, diluted and sprayed on them will kill them. It acts by disrupting their waxy exoskeleton and dehydrating them or smothering them so they are unable to breathe (they breathe through small openings in the sides of their bodies). Oils and soaps are generally non-toxic to humans.
There are also some bacterial products that you can spray on plants which insects are eating that will kill them (ie. Bt or Spinosid) It is more questionable how non-toxic they are, and how safe for beneficials they are. However, it is just a bacterial product, so I would think so long as you are careful with your application you would be ok. These bacteria sometimes are specific and target only certain pests or others are rather broad spectrum and will kill any insect that ingests them.
Just some additional suggestions!
A giant wasp just got in via a skylight.
Good for her for looking for safer options and thanks for posting. My grandfather loved his chemicals. He put DDT on the joists of his house when he built it. He had a whole shed full of chemicals that were no longer in use because they were dangerous. I remember stories of him pouring a pile of malathion or something on a slug just to see it bubble.
He died of a rare Leukemia.
Yes, it is worth searching out safer options!
Decades ago we had a small jar of malathion that we’d gotten for the garden (before we wised up). It got knocked off a shelf in the tool shed which had a plywood floor. We cleaned it up and didn’t get anymore because we’d decided by then we didn’t want that kind of junk on our food. Two YEARS later, my sister was visiting and brought her Great Pyrenees pup she’d gotten from us. He was about three months old by then and good sized. We were standing in the shed, eating sandwiches (we’d gone in there for some reason) and we dropped some bread on the floor for the pup. Next thing we knew he was laid out having a seizure! We were floored! Then I got to looking at the floor and I could see where he had licked it a little bit right where that malation had spilled. I believe it was still there strong enough to do that to that dog even after two years going by and with us walking all over that floor with our shoes, etc. That pup died by the time he was six months old from an acute distemper (and yes, he was vaccinated – my sister had that done). I don’t know if it was connected to the malation exposure or not, but it sure makes you wonder. And yes, that stuff can still be in your house/wood a LONG time later apparently.
Thanks for posting this. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really worth the extra hassle and effort.
Does anyone know of a safe and reliable flea control product? We just had a problem with fleas on my little dog…I used essential oils of cedar, peppermint, pennyroyal, and tea tree. Then sprinkled the floors, bedding, etc. with diatomaceous earth (food grade). This finally got rid of the fleas ( I HOPE!) but my dog has sores on her that are weeping and driving her nuts! I had to bathe her again to get it all cleaned off of her. I tried treating the boo boos with tea tree oil, but that doesn’t seem to be working. I am hoping a good bath will help. Poor Baby Dog! My back has also about had it from all of the bathing! ;D
Three years ago my husband and I lived in an apartment complex built on a poorly filled in swamp and dealt with the flea infestation from hell. Our border collie puppy was tiny and we tried everything to protect him – baking soda in the carpets, every all-natural flea bath and repellent we could find – you name it! We finally broke down and put him on Frontline. He hasn’t had a single flea since and shows no bad reactions to the product. Although that was a last resort for us, it has been a sanity saving option for us and him since we continue to live in apartment complexes and have few options.
I love the idea of making them into cookies. I’ve mixed borax and sugar in the past and it works too, but is more messy. Also, for ants (indoor or out) sprinkling diatomaceous earth will get rid of them quickly. Its messy too but won’t hurt humans. You can dump it directly on ant hills too. I’m working on compiling some of my favorite tips for getting rid of flies, which are coming in in droves right now with our garden veggies!
great post!
The oils in the egg attract the oil loving ants and the sugar attracts the sugar loving ones so the cookies get both types of ants as well as roaches with one type of cookie!
I have used Bay leaves with success as well. I dropped a bay leaf in each air conditioning vent and then also tucked them where the carpet meets the baseboard. You can usually shove them up under there and they won’t be seen. I read somewhere else that you can make a strong bay leaf tea and spray it around the baseboards too. I am going to try that soon. It has kept roaches at bay quite nicely!
we’ve been having a lot of ants this year. i’ve been putting a line of cinnamon across the entrance and a bowl of sugar outside. my plan was to pull the bowl of sugar farther and farther away from the house but i ended up not needing to.