Picture this: you’ve had a long day, and you’re ready to take a long bubble bath while listening to some jazz music. You’re about to start filling up the tub when you notice a couple of roaches scurrying around on the bathroom floor, and all of a sudden, you’re anything but relaxed. Cockroaches are some of the most disgusting and unwanted insects around, and the last place you want to find one is in your bathroom.
Roaches love to hide in small, dark spaces that you don’t know about, and they come out to play when you least expect it. While you might think that roaches in the bathroom are uncommon, you might be surprised to know that they love different places to hide.
In this article, we’re going to walk you through a series of different ways to get rid of roaches in a bathroom. We will also share some tips to help you keep them away from the bathroom after you’ve managed to get rid of them.
Let’s get right to it.
Why Are Cockroaches In My Bathroom?
As we mentioned earlier, you might find it surprising that roaches love hiding in bathrooms instead of kitchens where there is an adequate supply of food. However, roaches also love bathrooms, and here is why.
1. Roaches are searching for shelter
Roaches are usually found indoors, in houses, and other places that offer shelter because they are often searching for food and water. When you see cockroaches in your bathroom, it is generally because these insects found their way inside by crawling up a drainpipe, finding cracks in walls to climb through, or by fitting their bodies underneath the gap underneath a door.
2. They are searching for food and water
Since roaches tend to come indoors because they want water and food, they are attracted to rooms with an adequate water supply. In this case, they’re choosing the bathroom because they can drink water from small puddles on the bathroom floor after taking a shower or washing the bathroom.
3. Roaches are looking for places to hide
You will often find roaches underneath buckets, inside cabinets or other bathroom cupboards, and behind or inside trashcans. You are also likely to find roaches behind the commode, in damp corners of the shower, and underneath or next to the bathtub. The reason that cockroaches often choose a bathroom is that they are looking for places to hide.
4. Roaches thrive in warm climates
If you love taking warm or hot showers, then don’t be alarmed to find roaches in your shower. This is because cockroaches thrive in warm and damp places and tend to feed themselves and reproduce when they are in a warm place. While roaches love warm areas, they also fall inside bathtubs or enclosed showers and cannot escape. So, roaches might breed and multiply in a bathroom rather than a bedroom or kitchen.
7 Ways to Get Rid of Roaches in Bathroom
Finding a cockroach in your bathroom is the last thing that you want to see at any moment of the day. Here’s a list of seven home remedies that can help you get rid of roaches in your bathrooms.
Minimize the number of entry points into your bathroom
As we mentioned earlier, roaches enter rooms like the bathroom by climbing through drain pipes or crawling into the bathroom through pipes that have cracks in them. There might also be a few holes in your bathroom walls that are big enough for cockroaches to slip into and crawl into your bathroom.
Also, Read – How to Get Rid of Urine Smell in the Bathroom
Therefore, it is essential to remember that sealing as many entry points into your bathroom as possible is crucial because it will help you minimize the number of cockroaches entering your home.
To minimize the number of entry points into your bathroom, you could try out one of the following steps:
Fix tapes that are leaking
Roaches are often looking for a source of water to drink from. Since there might be small puddles of water located all over your bathroom because of a leaking tap, it’s important to remember that by fixing a leaky tap, you’re eliminating the amount of standing water in your bathroom.
Find cracks in your drain pipes and seal them
Roaches have a way of slithering into bathrooms by using cracked drain pipes as their entry point. Use a powerful light source, identify the pipes’ cracks, then seal the cracks firmly using epoxy putty or caulk.
Cover your drains at night
Don’t worry if you can’t repair your drain pipes because there is a third solution to sealing the roaches’ entry points. All you need to do is cover your drains every night before bed. You can cover the drains by using a stopper. If you can’t find a cover for a bathtub drain, you can use a small plastic medicine cup or an empty and washed coffee pod.
Kill the roaches using insecticide
One of the quickest and most effective ways to get rid of roaches in a bathroom is to pour insecticide down the drain.
Given below are some tips to keep in mind when killing roaches with insecticide:
- Depending on which bathroom drain you are pouring the insecticide down, make sure that you can remove the drain cover easily to get as much access as possible to the entire circumference of the drain.
- Please remember that it is essential to read the instructions on the bottle of the insecticide before you use it. If you don’t, you might use too much of the product. It’s also important to remember that you might need to wear safety equipment like rubber gloves and a face mask before handling the insecticide.
- Insecticide liquids often contain toxic chemicals that can be harmful to breathe in or ingest, which is why we’re recommending that you proceed with extreme caution.
- In many cases, you might need to let your drains absorb the insecticide for several hours, so you must ensure that you don’t use the cockroach-infested bathroom for quite a while. If you do, you might risk washing away the insecticide before it has had a chance to work and kill many roaches.
It is also important to note that after you pour insecticide down your drains, a wise thing to do would be to cover your drains with a stopper so that a new group of roaches doesn’t try and climb out of it.
Rub the surfaces in your bathroom with hot water and vinegar
If you would rather not use insecticides but still want to get rid of the roaches utilizing a home remedy, then you need not look any further than your home kitchen.
You will need to combine equal parts of hot water and white vinegar to try this method.
Once you’ve combined the two, all you need to do is rub this solution all over the walls and other surfaces in your bathroom. We suggest that you pay extra attention to areas in the bathroom where you’ve seen the roaches most often.
You can also pour this solution down your various bathroom drains. Still, it’s crucial to note that this home remedy is only a temporary solution.
Make use of essential oils
When you think of using essential oils, you might not think of using them in the context of keeping cockroaches away. However, if you need a quick fix that helps you get rid of roaches, this solution is perfect!
All you need to do is simply distill water into a spray bottle, then add several drops of essential oil like peppermint, lavender, or tea tree oil to the bottle. Next, all that you need to do is liberally spray your bathroom with water and essential oil solution.
Essential oils are one of the most effective products that help get rid of insects like roaches. They are even helpful when trying to get rid of bedbugs as well! Again, please note that this solution is only temporary, so you might need to use some stronger roach removal techniques in the future.
Clean your bathroom thoroughly
While this step might sound silly and obvious, it’s an important one to try out.
If you keep a garbage can in your bathroom and empty it infrequently, then the scent of garbage in the can might be what is attracting roaches to your bathroom. Therefore, emptying the trash can often prevents dirt from accumulating.
Additionally, it would be advisable to clean your bathroom at least twice a week. You must take care to scrub every surface with disinfecting products that are good at removing tough stains and odors to prevent roaches from crawling into your bathroom and reproducing.
By cleaning your bathroom regularly and often, you are both making sure that you are reducing or eliminating bacterial and trash that attracts roaches while also taking care of your health and safety.
Once you’ve finished cleaning your bathroom, make sure that you let it dry with the door open. If you have an exhaust fan, let it run for about thirty minutes to an hour to help circulate fresh and help the bathroom dry much quicker.
Use boric acid
If you’ve been trying out various home remedies that haven’t successfully killed many roaches, then you could try out this tip.
All you need is some boric acid and a completely dry bathroom. When your bathroom is fully dry, sprinkle the boric acid all over the floor and in the tiny crevices of the bathroom. Boric acid does not work if it comes into contact with water, which is why it is crucial to make sure that your bathroom is completely dry.
It’s important to note that boric acid is highly poisonous, so you need to be cautious when using it. If you have pets or young children, make sure they cannot come inside the bathroom and accidentally ingest the boric acid powder.
Consult a pest control service
Our final tip might sound like the most obvious choice, but there are times when we feel like we can get rid of household pets on our own! However, if you’ve tried multiple methods and failed, consulting and hiring a pest control service to get rid of the roaches once and for all might be your best bet.
Tips to keep roaches away from the bathroom
As you have learned by now, roaches love bathrooms because of the abundant water supply. However, once you get rid of cockroaches for a while doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t come back.
Here are some ways to keep roaches away from your bathroom:
- Make sure that your trashcan remains closed at all times.
- Don’t let your trashcan get too full or overflow; otherwise, you could risk attracting roaches into your bathroom again.
- Take care to ensure that your bathroom remains dry. After showering, keep your bathroom door open. If you have an exhaust fan, let it run for a while to help circulate the air and help the bathroom dry faster.
- If you tend to dry your towel inside the bathroom after a shower, consider drying your towel elsewhere so that you prevent moisture and condensation from forming in the bathroom and remaining there.
Wrapping Up
In this article, we took you through several ways to get rid of roaches in your bathroom. From home remedies using ingredients that you can find in your kitchen to stronger, chemical-based methods, we tried to include as many ways to get rid of roaches as possible. The next time you have a problem with roaches, we hope you use one of the recommended methods!
