Cockroaches are not that hard to kill, right?
You can easily squish them with your bare hands. Or perhaps you can step on the targeted cockroach with your legs, can’t you?
Well… not everyone wants that because they fear the effect of the cockroach allergen. That’s why in this article, we have compiled a series of strategies to kill a cockroach without touching it.
But note; that some of these methods will teach you how to kill a cockroach without spray.
Some will require that you make sprays.
And others will require that you buy a few things. But no worries, we’ll make everything easy to understand, okay?
How Can You Kill a Cockroach Without Touching It?
You can kill a roach without contact with many methods.
To make things easier, we’ll group the strategies into three.
One group will include the methods that involve physical, easily available materials like vacuum cleaners and natural substances.
The second group of no-touching roach killer methods will comprise how you can kill a cockroach with homemade sprays.
As for the third, we will talk about the different commercial sprays that can help to kill a roach without touching it.
Let’s begin, shall we?
Natural Ways to Kill a Cockroach With Touching It
1. Diatomaceous Earth.
At first glance, a mound of diatomaceous earth would resemble white dust. But it isn’t ordinary dust.
Instead, it is considered the best, verified, natural and multipurpose pest and roach killer.
Specifically, it is good for killing anything with an exoskeleton and for repelling any pest at all.
In most cases, people use it to kill bedbugs, other bugs, different flying cockroach species, spider mites, centipedes, termites, carpet beetles, clover mites, and more.
In other cases, you can use diatomaceous earth to repel rodents like rats, raccoons, voles, and even moles.
But to use diatomaceous effectively to kill a roach, you need to be as pesky as the roach itself.
To do that, you need to locate and map out the entry point (and pathway, if possible) often taken by your house roach.
If you’re dealing with a full-scale cockroach infestation, try to look for their nests.
Sometimes, a chunk of cockroach feces can give the nest away. So, be on the lookout.
Once you have a good idea about all these, buy some diatomaceous earth from a nearby store.
Mix it with cocoa powder to hide the scent. And then sprinkle it in those roach-rich areas.
On contact, the diatomaceous earth will peel off the waxy layer of the roach’s exo-skin and absorb its oil.
When that happens, the roach loses its ability to conserve water. And it dies of dehydration.
Besides that, the diatomaceous earth continues to stick to the body of the affected roach.
When other roaches come in contact with it, they also die of the same cause.
Now, considering this, many people often think that diatomaceous earth is dangerous to humans as well.
But this is a fallacy. It doesn’t.
But because the diatomaceous earth has very fine grains, you can easily inhale it. And this can cause some breathing allergies like cough and catarrh.
If you use nose masks and wear gloves as you apply them, then food-grade diatomaceous earth is safe for both humans and pets.
2. Boric Acid.
Boric acid is another natural compound. But this one is often found in plants and can be dried into a powder form.
In this form, you can sprinkle it on areas rich in roach activity. And like food-grade diatomaceous earth, it sticks to the body of the targeted roach.
Sometimes, it can be on the leg, wings, and mouth areas.
Cockroaches used these body parts as feeding accessories. So, there’s a high chance that your targeted roach will ingest the boric acid.
If it does, then the cockroach will die of digestive and nervous disorders.
To use boric acid to kill cockroaches without touching them, place an orange peel or a spoon scoop of peanut butter on the middle of a plate.
Surround the peel or peanut butter with boric acid dust. Place the place in areas where cockroaches usually visit. Then, wait for the result.
However, this bait should be kept far away from your pets and kids.
That’s because boric acid may also cause digestive disorders in pets and humans as well.
link to Can Cockroaches Survive in Water?
- READ MORE: Can Cockroaches Survive in Water?
3. Borax Powder.
If food-grade diatomaceous earth would be a hard buy, you can opt-in for borax powder instead.
That’s because, like the diatomaceous earth found in diatoms, stores sell the borax powder as a green product.
The major reason for this is that borax doesn’t contain phosphates or chlorine.
Instead, its active ingredient is sodium tetraborate, which is usually found as a natural mineral but comes as an active ingredient in laundry products.
Like other substances on this list, borax kills a roach by dehydrating it. For best results, simply mask the scent of borax with white sugar. Sprinkle the mix in places rich in roach activity. Wait for a few days, locate the dead cockroaches, and vacuum them into a trash bag.
But note this; borax can be quite messy and often requires two or more applications before you can see results.
However, if used well, it can work on a large cockroach infestation. And it kills both adult and young roaches.
4. Vacuum cleaning.
Sometimes, to kill a few roaches or when you’re dealing with a mild roach infestation, all you have to do is reach for your vacuum cleaner.
With it, you can suck up the roaches, the eggs, and their nest.
Once you have them, carefully remove the vacuum plastic bag and place it inside a freezer.
Normally, roaches die under conditions below 40 F. Our freezer simulates way below that.
So, if you leave a plastic bag filled with roaches there for about 4 hours, the roaches will die off.
Once they do, you can simply empty the plastic bag filled with dead roaches in a trash can to be disposed of asap.
5. Baking Soda.
There’s a high chance you have baking soda in your pantry right now.
To you, it’s a great add-on to pastries and cake.
In the pest control world, baking soda is one of the most available pest control substances out there.
To use baking soda as a roach killer, you need to dice a few onions and mix them with the powder. Together, both the onions and the baking soda become a powerful roach bait and insect pest killer. Once it consumes the bait, the targeted roach(es) will die of cockroach allergies.
This is because baking soda is quite alkaline.
So, when it gets to the stomach of the targeted roach, it causes its stomach acid to release gases that build up.
Eventually, the roach will die when its intestines burst.
When it bursts, everywhere will be quite messy within a few-inch radius.
So, that gives the first demerit of using baking soda.
The other one is that this baking soda mixture can’t be used safely around pets and kids unless you keep them away.
Then again, onion is specifically poisonous to dogs. So, you can consider other alternatives if you have both dogs and kids.
Home remedies to Kill a Cockroach Without Touching It
1. Hot water and bleach.
Normally, bleach can kill cockroaches. But this is one of the most controversial cockroach facts out there.
But you have to drown an entire cockroach in bleach for it to die off.
So, bleach isn’t really that good a roach killer.
And since the entire essence of this article is to show you how to kill a cockroach without touching it, asking you to pick up a cockroach and dip it inside a bleach would betray that.
But there’s an alternative way to use bleach. Simply mix it with hot water and use it as needed.
However, this bleach mixture is often good for places that are already filled with water.
Good examples of that are the bathroom and kitchen drains.
But be careful; hot bleach can damage pipes.
So, use it with caution. And make sure you wear protective equipment like gloves and nose make while making this roach killer recipe.
2. Listerine and Water.
Like Dawn soaps that kill fleas and vinegar that probably kill lice, Listerine is another household agent claimed to kill pests.
However, unlike dawn soaps, Listerine is a United States brand of mouthwash; in case you don’t know.
But according to many first-hand witnesses, this mouthwash can also kill cockroaches.
To use it, you will simply mix Listerine, water, and any dishwashing liquid. Bottle the mixture in a can and spray directly on your cockroach population and their nest crevice.
Often, the Listerine spray becomes sticky.
So, it can block the breathing pores in the targeted roach. And with that, the roach can suffocate to death.
Afterward, you can clean out the dead cockroach and then wipe out any affected surface or furniture with a damp cloth.
link to Do Cockroaches Bite? (How to Treat the bite)
Commercial Products for Killing a Cockroach Without Touching It
1. Roach Bait Stations.
Cockroach bait is simply a chemical mixture designed to lure and then kill a roach.
In most cases, commercial baits come in a bait station. And they are one of the fastest cockroach control methods out there.
These bait stations often have gel bait whose scents attract the cockroach to a “kill cockroach” poison.
When it eats poison, the German roach dies in its nest, where others feast on it.
If they do, the poison goes around the cockroach population and they all die.
When that happens, take some extra steps to find the nest and get rid of the dead roaches.
Out there, the Black Flag Roach Motel is one of the best brands of roach bait devices out there. Others include:
2. Glue Traps.
If you note well, you realize that most of the homemade methods you need to kill a roach require you to know areas rich in roach activity.
To do that, you can make use of a cockroach trap.
When indoors, glue traps can help you identify areas rich in cockroach traffic.
Outdoors and sticky traps are much preferable. You simply lay them at entrances and wait for the result.
Best sticky traps for German and Oriental cockroach species include:
A Cockroach bug spray is simply an instant insecticide that helps with a cockroach problem.
If you don’t want to get close to a roach or you feel scared of allergic reactions while needing to eliminate a roach, then you need a roach spray.
Out there, you will find so many. But no matter the one you choose, make sure you follow its usage instructions properly.
if you need options to consider, here’s a list of the roach sprays we recommend:
Final Recommendations.
So far, we have tried to make this article an exhaustive list and guide on how to kill any kind of cockroach without touching it.
Inside it, we focused on both ingenious home remedies and commercial sprays you can use to get rid of your cockroach problem.
But as take-home points, try to note the following whenever you intend to get rid of cockroaches:
- That; simply eliminating cockroaches without clearing out their nests and killing the eggs may cause re-infestation. So, watch out for these as well.
- ; to prevent future re-infestation, you also need to remove the likely food source that attracts cockroaches into your house.
- ; many people often use roach bombs, aka foggers. But we suggest you look for other, safer alternatives. If you want to know why roach bombs are unsafe, here’s a related article.