Roaches. Roaches everywhere!

[Pikarya]

Either you or a neighbor are allowing them to feast. Take your pick. Roaches are due 99% to residency neglect/food waste.

Also dumpsters nearby.

[Mizango]

You sound as if you live in Texas. Roaches are common house mates in the Lone Star.

[Khajit]

The good news is you can probably get rid of em for a short bit. The bad news is that the roaches are going to come inside whenever it's raining as they can also live in this previously thought to be mythical location known as outside.

[Kalmado]

State/area definitely plays a role. I HATE any insect with a passion. When I moved to Florida my folks warned me about the palmetto bug(florida roach). Those things are disgusting! I was told it doesn't matter how clean you keep your house, they are just, well, there in FL. My parents were renting a house when I moved down there and they'd only been living there for a few months. When rainy season came, the kitchen area started having a small roach issue. We found they were coming through the dishwasher and sink. They never went anywhere but the kitchen. Even after an exterminator came a few times they never seems to fully go away. I moved out after finding a job and my parents moved out of the house shortly after.

[notorious bum]

Boric acid is the only reliable shit you can do to keep them from re-populating in your house. It's an eyesore, but if you keep a layer of that shit down in your cabinets, countertops, in any gaps between fridge, stove, etc., you will notice a difference immediately. When you live nextdoor to fuckers who refuse to keep their garbage sealed and constantly have it torn open by cats, it's IMPOSSIBLE to eradicate them, no matter how good your exterminator is, so you basically have to always take preventative measures.

Obviously everyone will tell you not to leave dirty dishes out or provide a source of water for them, but they'll just setup shop in someone else's place that has shit to eat and constantly try to invade your place. Shit, these fuckers can live off of eating paper or even eachother lol You get bug savvy living in FL, where everybody has them, unless you're living in the burbs. Even then, this tropical shithole has perfect living conditions.

edit: Also, be warned that whatever poison you choose lay down has a high chance of not working or baiting the roaches, at all, due to how fast they acquire immunity to the OTC products. Boric acid is the only guaranteed product of killing them, due to the roaches being forced to clean it off of themselves when they step in it=dead.

[Salodin]

If its an apartment situation, you're pretty much fucked unless all tenants are on the same page as you. I had the same situation in an apartment, and while it never goes away, you can curb the problem greatly if you follow some steps.

First, clean clean clean. Even if you're a clean person, roaches in particula can live off the small shit we never see with ease. So scrub and disinfect all kitchen counters and appliances, including inside your fridge. Vacuum and sweep all the floors, disinfect as well. This is honestly the hardest part, but the bonus is its nice to have a super clean house.

Second, get your bait traps. Since roaches don't have queens like ants, the slow working poisons aren't as amazing as they are when dealing with ants, but they still help since roaches like to stay close together. The instant kill stuff works too, but generally don't work as much as your traps where they take the food and walk away. This goes for almost all insect pest problems. I used the bait that came in a syringe, forget the name though. I just put pea sized blobs under and inside corners of my cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom (roaches love that shit). Then I took traps and put those 1 or 2 corners of every room, under appliances, and any other dark and less traveled areas of the home (under tv since I rarely move anything there, under water heater, etc etc).

Lastly, and I swear this was the key to my success, go hunting for nymphs; those are the babies. If you catch the next generation when they're small, you'll have an easier time weeks later. Roaches like to hide in places we can't reach, but a lot of times you can still find them and kill them before they can breed. Check behind and on top of drapery and blinds, behind picture frames (this is huge), and in closets too.

Good luck! You can probably never get rid of em all, but you can definitely get them down to the point where if they live there, you just don't see them any more.

[Byrthnoth]

One more thing. Roaches are really good at hiding. Unless you own the place where you live and can pretty much tear it apart, you're never going to find all of them. Also, they avoid the light like the plague. If you're actually seeing roaches during the day (or seeing husks) then the infestation is much worse than you think. You only see roaches that are either fucked up on pesticides or forced from the colony during the day (like <1%), and if you haven't sprayed then you know it's the latter. The garbage chute across from my apartment was infested two years ago. AFAIK the building manager nuked the crap out of it multiple times and then essentially abandoned it. The door is jammed and cannot be opened. I just carry all my trash downstairs, but it's better than roaches!

Roach motels work in theory, but the impression I got from the exterminators I talked to was that any commercial stuff you can buy at Home Depot or wherever is going to be too impotent to actually harm other roaches after they bring it back to the nest. You need them to be carrying some pretty seriously toxic shit for it to kill things at the nest, and that's just not available to the general public.

[Cream Soda]

At least (at least with me) I've never been bitten or anything by a roach. They're just gross to look at and as long as you can keep them out of food you haven't eaten, it's not as big as a problem as the infestations with shit that do bite. I had a flea infestation once and that one was just a bitch. I'm currently fighting a mosquito infection. Anyone have any tips in that battle? Those fuckers make it hard to sleep

[Salodin]

Mosquitos? I seriously doubt they're breeding inside your home, since they need standing water. Do you have buckets or pools outside that aren't being emptied or used much? They'll breed the fuck in those, and are the best places to start since there aren't natural predators eatting them (like baby fish). Lakes and slow moving rivers count too, but those are generally kept stocked with fish so that they can eat the larva before they get a chance to grow up and fly away.

Don't waste your money on normal traps for them though, they aren't attracted to light or scent like other flying pests, only carbon dioxide; so sticky traps or bug zappers aren't effective. You either need a special trap designed to lure and kill them (using propane and is way out of your price range), or just do what I said above. Really though, either the city or development (i don't know where it is you're squatting) needs to treat any large water systems (lakes or rivers) in order to see any real benefit, or else you just gotta live with them.

[Kerberoz]

Release hundreds of bats.

[hey]

Did you not get a mosquito net the last time it was suggested to you?

Or bats. That works too. Of course then you'll have bats all over, but no mosquitos!

[Qalbert]

roaches are one of my few completely irrational phobias, but I see one and just go into SHIT SHIT FUCK KILL IT SOMEONE mode
lol

[Omniyoji]

Heard that shrews & skunks like to eat roaches. You could also get praying manti and house centipedes and watch them do battles with the roaches... bug fights @ Aristio's house! $20 bucks on the roaches <_<

[Chun Liroy]

I nominate the Praying manti war.

[BadKarma]

Water Bugs dont give a FUCK how clean your house is. In NY, if you run an AC for 34 seconds in the summer, they will come for you, they will find you and they will infest you

[notorious bum]

Aren't Palmettos beetles anyways? Also, roaches live in your walls, the ones that show up on your counters are the minority, so that's why preventative long-term measures are the only ways to get "rid" of them. Roach bait gel no longer works either, they were good when they first came out, but roaches are actually smart and won't eat that shit anymore.

[Xtrasweettea]

I don't know your living situation, though I can share what I did when I lived in a place with roach infestation problems. *TLDR at the bottom

The infestation took place in a "low income" apartment building complex where I rented from in Florida (Tampa area). It was my first place, if I had done my homework more, I wouldn't have moved there: lots of Latinos (mostly Mexicans who lived there temporarily or became permanent one way or another), section 8 tenants, a small percent of white trash, and about 3% of the people were first-time-on-their-own renters. If you weren't Latino, you didn't get the "best" quality service by the owners of the place, from what I have personally experienced. For those who are curious, it was Carlton Arms apartment complex.

Anyway I had roaches every-one-in a while. When I would see one, I would super clean the apartment and put some poison down. That worked for awhile until two months before I left, when I had new neighbors moved in all around me. It was obvious I was not going to enjoy my time left at that place (I wasn't enjoying it already, just no way it could get any better). The neighbors would leave their garbage in the hallways that connected the apartments. So, we started getting more roaches. Someone complained and inspectors came out to inspect the apartments while I was at work. I got a letter of "clean the place up or we'll kick you out" notice. I asked the owners why I got the letter. The owners said the inspectors claimed "my apartment was infested with roaches" and "the apartment was filthy with food all over the place." I took the owners of the complex to the apartment, and wouldn't you know it, it's fucking clean with no roaches in sight. The inspectors wrote the number wrong apartment number down on their inspection from what I have found out through investigation.

So, the next time (and every time) I saw a roach, I had my phone on me and took photos of the roach in the location it was in the apartment and the condition of the apartment. I emailed these to the owners and complained. The owners finally stopped being lazy and actually inspected apartments themselves and found out where the roaches were coming from after the 5th time I emailed them. By this time, I didn't care, I was moving out to rent a small sized condo.

What I would do, if you are renting in an apartment complex, take photos of the roach (if possible) and your apartment condition at the time. Launch complaints. If your place is clean, then there isn't anything that can be used against you from the owners if they come to inspect the place after the fact.

*TLDR: Take photos of roach and apartment at time of roach sighting, launch complaints to owners, protect yourself legally on top of what protection you get from cleaning/poisoning.

[Khajit]

Aren't Palmettos beetles anyways? Also, roaches live in your walls, the ones that show up on your counters are the minority, so that's why preventative long-term measures are the only ways to get "rid" of them. Roach bait gel no longer works either, they were good when they first came out, but roaches are actually smart and won't eat that shit anymore.

They are. I think alot of people confuse them with African roaches or something.
Roaches gain resistance to hundreds of poisons extremely fast so the stuff that's banned from shelves is usually the only stuff that would work after a week or so. The shit everyone uses over here is Baygon and that stuff is outright banned in America and/or related to agent orange. The good news is it works. The bad news is it also works on you.
Oh and if the roaches are out in the light it's because they got infected with a mind control fungus/parasite that actually wants them to die.

[Raldo]

Speaking of bug-semantics... every time I see a roach in my house and say something about it, my wife is all "That's a water bug, not a roach!". My obvious response is "Who gives a shit? It needs to die!" but is there some actual distinction between all these looks-like-a-roach-but-isn't vs real roaches, or can you just treat them all the same?

[Kerberoz]

Speaking of mammal-semantics... every time I see a donkey in my house and say something about it, my wife is all "That's a grizzly bear, not a donkey!". My obvious response is "Who gives a shit? It needs to die!" but is there some actual distinction between all these looks-like-a-donkey-but-isn't vs real donkies, or can you just treat them all the same?

There's your answer.