In the only neighborhood we’ve lived in, I should have had. The bug man frequented the neighborhood. He would leave fliers warning this neighborhood was infested.
I don’t know why but I never got them.
I told him quit leaving me the fliers. He probably had roach eggs on his shoes and he was the reason the neighbors were infested.
Out of an abundance of caution we had the yard sprayed by a competing company.
When we sold the house I left with a clean roach free conscience.
Out here in the boonies it’s centipedes, spiders, wasps, frogs, and every little furry mammal known to man.
I live in a log house, so my chief occupation is to keep the critters from eating my house.
So far they’ve kept their lives centered around the big barn.
I keep food and pet feed put away. And the crumbly kids eating in the kitchen only.
When we first got married, and were living in a mid-sized apartment building in suburban Chicago, we had recurrent roach problems (we always blamed the neighbors. as one does ). Building management had the apartments regularly sprayed.
Since we moved into our house (in a different suburb) 28 years ago, we’ve never seen a roach. We have a number of other critters consistently in the house: mostly various species of spider – primarily jumping spiders, cellar spiders, and yellow sac spiders – as well house centipedes and silverfish.
We’ve had a few ant incursions over the years, and mice make their way in when the weather gets cold (and are quickly dispatched by the cats). This past summer, when we were in the throes of our seventeen-year cicada emergence, we found a fair number of them in the basement – they probably got in through a hole somewhere (it’s an old house).
So, if we have roaches (or rats), they never make their presence known.
No roaches in my suburban Chicago home. Lots of earwigs though. If you want some earwigs, I know a guy. Me. I’m the guy.
Also assorted spiders, some centipedes (red ones, not house centipedes) and, whenever the ground gets sodden in the spring, we get ants until it dries out. And we have mice in the garage that I never see but twice they’ve found a nest built in the cabin filter of my car. Detached garage though and we have two cats in the house so I’m pretty sure the rodents are confined to out there. No roaches though.
We have roaches now. They showed up about 4 months ago. They have exploded since. As soon as we get a room that is quite possibly where good little roaches go when they
die. My "adult"daughter and her husband did that, totally trashed and destroyed it, and she is going to clean it. Unless I get tired of waiting then I’m going to do it, and she won’t like it.
Consider using Diatomaceous Earth. Sprinkle it everywhere along baseboards and in cabinets and wherever food is. Non-toxic (some you could actually eat…not sure why you’d want to but it is safe). Takes some time to work though.
Do your own research though. I am not sure how “safe” it really is (my way of saying this is the internet and don’t sue me).
And what a mess that crap is.
Mr. Wrek dumped bags and bags of it because of his feed in the barn…it is safe around feed. (I would not want it near my human food, YMMV).
Limited improvement.
I suggested he put his feed in bug/rodent proof barrels. It’s even decreased the fly population out there.
If there is no food the problem goes away. What is considered food to these pests can be debated.
Oh we’ve been through that along with bait, baited glue traps, lots of squashing, and poison. I really hate the little bastards. Squishing them gives me a feeling of vindication? Small victory? Though I’d rather have them gone.
Best I can tell they pretty much consider anything food. Especially, if it’s stinky. I’ve read they like to hide in dirty clothes cause dirty clothes smell delicious to them. Yuk.
Probably controversial, I think these companies that make the bug poison are not in it to completely eliminate the problem.
Why would they? If all the bugs are gone their business model has just been bankrupt.
I won’t say they attract the bugs with their formulas but maybe just make a few sick, the aged and dying ones die on off. Leaves more for the up and comers to eat and then breed.
Over and over.
It’s a common theme. E.G. Drug companies never want to cure a disease…they want to treat it. Treatment is forever and money forever. A cure ends their profits.
There are no houses that are completely roach-free. Consider: Even if a house is roach-free when you move in, if you’re messy enough, eventually you’ll have roaches. Those roaches didn’t spontaneously generate; they moved in from elsewhere. Which means that, every so often, there must have been a roach explorer checking out the house to see if it was suitable.
Thus, even if the roaches never stick around, it must be the case that you occasionally still have those explorer roaches.
I have lived in the LA area, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Spokane, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and the only places I saw cockroaches were at a lunch counter in downtown Sacramento and in my apartment in D.C. I know they’re probably there but I have yet to encounter a cockroach in the Pacific Northwest.
It’s this kind of absolutist statement, as made by the OP, that I disagree with. It may be that in the long term (as Arthur C Clarke famously predicted) insects will come to dominate the earth, and cockroaches will undoubtedly be among them. But in the practical reality, when a neighbourhood doesn’t have roaches, either because they’ve been exterminated from every house, or never had them because it’s all new construction, and when cold weather prevents their migration, then roach-free houses certainly can and do exist.
In fact, to reiterate my earlier point, I’ve never even seen a cockroach in the wild. I did once see an ugly roach-like bug in a previous house some years ago and was so upset that I captured it and took it to a pesticide expert. He declared it to be a strawberry root weevil, and it was the only one I ever saw.
). Building management had the apartments regularly sprayed.