It's time to share a bit of a horror story.
I've lived in the same apartment for 5 years now. It's a 10 year old building designed in an industrial style with exposed concrete and brick and it's right smack in the middle of a modern neighborhood that has once full of warehouses and mechanic shops downtown. I've never had any problems with my neighbors until one day. I was having some beers with my friends on the balcony, when I decided to take a peek into my neighbor's window out of sheer curiosity.
As you might be able to tell from this photo, our balconies are right next to each other, so all I had to do is poke my head out.
What I saw, made me have to look again. Just like when you smell your own fart and cringe only to have to take a second whif and confirm the cringe.
My neighbor was a F%$@&*g hoarder!
Clothes, boxes, bags... EVERYTHING stacked everywhere. I had to tell my friends and only a couple came to take a peek. It was absolutely disgusting.
She was a friendly neighbor with a nice little dog. She never had any loud parties or anything, but pretty soon, the nastiest, quiet little problem I've ever had to deal with would start. Some cockroaches started arriving from her balcony to ours. We didn't know where they were coming from so we assumed they were coming up from the sewage pipes. No worry, we stomped them, sprayed them and didn't think much of it. Soon enough, however, without us noticing, cockroaches had made their nests inside the walls, behind the fridge and cupboards and turning the light on at night sent dozens of the little shits scrambling for shelter.
This had never happened before.
Other neighbors started filing complaints and eventually she was evicted, but not her little friends. They stuck around in their comfy hideouts and came out to munch on dog food, crumbs and anything they could find in the middle of the night.
It was a nightmare.
We weren't going to let them win the battle though so we came up with a plan
Spray, roach killers and sticky traps
We went to our local hardware store and bought a bunch of bug spray cans so that we could get the little buggers whenever we saw some. We also made some DIY roach bait which consists of equal parts baking soda and powdered sugar.
You make little piles of the mix close to where you've seen roaches. The roaches will get attracted to the mix because of the sugar and eat it and then the baking soda will react in their stomachs and kill the roaches. This is super useful if you have children or pets in your home since it's non toxic and also cost effective.
And finally, we bought sticky roach traps that would catch them if they walked on its extra sticky surface.
Weekend cleaning and surprise attacks
Roaches love hiding and some of the places they like the most include the back of your refrigerator where it's nice, warm and dark. Saturdays and Sundays was for surprise attacks. We'd move de fridge to give them a roach spray attack when they least expected it. We also cleaned the cupboards and any storage space where they might have found a hiding spot.
Plastic containers.
Our problem led us to do some research. As it turns out, roaches will survive by eating things that you wouldn't even think of including paper, cardboard and glue. So all our food had to be put into plastic containers. That means rice, cookies, cereal. Nothing was to be left outside.
Even our dog food went from this
To this:
Sealing the cupboards.
Finally, our biggest blow to the invasion was to seal all the hiding places provided by the cupboards with caulk. That meant moving the fridge, removing the cupboard doors and finding all cracks that may provide a hiding place for these disgusting invaders.
The underside of the countertops where done with clear silicone Caulk, which by looking at this picture I did a pretty good job because you can't even tell.
The topside of the cupboards where all sealed and pro tip: you should try to clean this area regularly or at least once a month because it gets full of grease from cooking.
The doors were also removed for deep cleaning.
And everything underneath the sink was sealed.
It's been a couple of weeks since we started our war on bugs and I have to say we are incredibly relieved. New neighbors moved in, our problem is gone and peace is once again in the realm.
Doesn't mean we're not ready though.
We're WAY ready.
