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You turn the kitchen light on at midnight and the floor moves. And the worst of it is you have been fighting them. You have sprayed, you have put down powder, you have set traps. And there seem to be more of them than there were a month ago.
Here is why you cannot win. A single roach egg capsule, the size of a grain of rice, holds thirty to fifty roaches waiting to hatch. A pest man pulled out one refrigerator and counted ten of them behind it. That is three to five hundred roaches, and every spray in the world goes straight over the top of them and does nothing at all.
So the thing that actually breaks an infestation is not a spray, not a powder, and not a bait. It is free, you already own it, and it works this afternoon.
In this video:
✓ What a roach egg capsule looks like, and why sprays and powders cannot touch it
✓ The shop vacuum method that takes out most of an infestation in thirty minutes
✓ Exactly where to vacuum, and the spot where the worst of them always is
✓ What to do with the canister the moment you shut it off
✓ Why taking away their water does more harm than a cabinet
https://eliasyoder.com
You turn the kitchen light on at midnight and the floor moves. And the worst of it is you have been fighting them. You have sprayed, you have put down powder, you have set traps. And there seem to be more of them than there were a month ago.
Here is why you cannot win. A single roach egg capsule, the size of a grain of rice, holds thirty to fifty roaches waiting to hatch. A pest man pulled out one refrigerator and counted ten of them behind it. That is three to five hundred roaches, and every spray in the world goes straight over the top of them and does nothing at all.
So the thing that actually breaks an infestation is not a spray, not a powder, and not a bait. It is free, you already own it, and it works this afternoon.
In this video:
✓ What a roach egg capsule looks like, and why sprays and powders cannot touch it
✓ The shop vacuum method that takes out most of an infestation in thirty minutes
✓ Exactly where to vacuum, and the spot where the worst of them always is
✓ What to do with the canister the moment you shut it off
✓ Why taking away their water does more harm than a cabinet
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You turn the kitchen light on at midnight, and the floor moves.
00:04That is the moment you never forget.
00:07The counter, the wall behind the stove, the crack along the cabinet,
00:12all of it running and scattering away from the light,
00:14and you stand there in your bare feet, in your own kitchen,
00:18feeling like the house does not belong to you anymore.
00:22And the worst of it is, you have been fighting them.
00:25You have sprayed, you have put down powder, you have set traps.
00:30And they are still there.
00:32And there seem to be more of them than there were a month ago.
00:36I am Elias Yoder, and I want to show you the thing that actually breaks a roach infestation.
00:42And it is not the thing you would guess.
00:44It is not a spray. It is not a powder.
00:48It is free. You already own it.
00:50And it works this afternoon, rather than in three weeks.
00:54And almost nobody talks about it, which is why I am going to.
00:59Let me say one thing, and then I will not bring it up again.
01:03I have gathered these old ways into a book over at EliasYoder.com.
01:08If you want it, it is there. That is all.
01:12Now let us take your kitchen back.
01:14First, I have to tell you why everything you have tried has failed.
01:18Because until you understand this, you will keep failing.
01:22And it is not your fault.
01:24You have been fighting the wrong enemy.
01:27When you spray a roach, you kill that roach.
01:30Good.
01:31But that roach was never the problem.
01:34Let me show you what the problem is.
01:36A female roach carries a little brown capsule on her back end.
01:40It looks like a tiny seed or a grain of rice.
01:44A hard case.
01:45And folks who see one do not even know what they are looking at.
01:49That capsule is an egg case.
01:52And inside that one little capsule, there are 30 to 50 roaches waiting to hatch.
01:5830 to 50 in one capsule the size of a grain of rice.
02:03Now, a man I know went into a kitchen not long ago and pulled out the refrigerator and counted the
02:10egg capsules he found in that one spot.
02:13He found 10 of them, 10 capsules, that is 300 to 500 roaches sitting there behind the refrigerator, not yet
02:23hatched, not walking around, and every spray in the world going straight over the top of them and doing nothing
02:30at all.
02:31That is why you cannot win.
02:34You are killing the ones you can see, and the ones you cannot see are hatching out faster than you
02:40are killing.
02:41You are bailing a boat with a hole in the bottom of it.
02:44You could spray that kitchen every single day, and the roaches would keep coming, and you would think there was
02:51something supernatural about them, and there is not.
02:54They are simply outbreeding you from hiding places you never even looked at.
02:59So the whole business turns on one idea, and here it is.
03:04You must get the egg capsules, not just the roaches, the eggs.
03:09If you do not get the eggs, nothing else you do will hold, and if you do get the eggs,
03:16everything else you do will work.
03:19My grandfather taught me this lesson, though not about roaches.
03:22We had a bad year with thistle in the north pasture, and I went out with a scythe, and I
03:28cut every thistle I could see, and I was proud of myself, and I told him the pasture was clean.
03:35And he walked out there with me, and he did not say anything for a while.
03:38And then he crouched down, and he pointed at the ground where I had cut, at the stubs standing there
03:45in the dirt, and he said,
03:47What did you do to the root?
03:49And of course I had done nothing to the root.
03:52I had taken the top off every one of them, and left every root in the ground.
03:57And inside of a month, that pasture was thistle again, worse than before, because a cut thistle comes back angrier.
04:05And he said the thing I have never forgotten.
04:08He said,
04:09Cutting the part you can see feels like work, and it is not work.
04:14It is only tidiness.
04:16The work is getting at the part you cannot see.
04:20That is your roach problem exactly.
04:23Spraying the roaches you can see is tidiness.
04:27It feels like you are doing something, and it accomplishes nothing at all.
04:31Because the roots of the thing, the eggs, are sitting untouched behind your refrigerator, hatching out another 300.
04:40Do not be tidy.
04:42Get the roots.
04:44Now.
04:45How do you get them?
04:46You cannot spray them, because a spray will not go through that hard case.
04:51That is what the case is for.
04:53You cannot poison them, because they are not eating anything yet.
04:57Poison and spray are both useless against an egg.
05:01There is only one thing that gets an egg capsule out of your house, and it is the plainest thing
05:07you can imagine.
05:08And this is the part nobody talks about.
05:10You suck them up.
05:13I mean it.
05:14Get a shop vacuum, the sort that lives in most every garage in this country, the kind you use for
05:21sawdust and wet spills.
05:23If you have not got one, borrow one from a neighbor for an afternoon.
05:28And you go into that kitchen, and you vacuum them up.
05:32Every single one.
05:34Now, I know exactly how that sounds.
05:37It sounds too plain to be worth anything.
05:39You were expecting a chemical, or a secret mixture, or something clever.
05:44And here I am telling you to get out the vacuum, and you are thinking, that is not a treatment.
05:50That is just cleaning.
05:51But I want you to hear me on this, because it is the single most effective thing you can do
05:57to a roach infestation.
05:59And the professional pest men who know their business do it before they ever touch a chemical.
06:05Here is why it is so powerful.
06:07It gets the eggs.
06:09That is the whole of it.
06:11That vacuum is the only tool that physically takes those egg capsules out of your house and puts them in
06:18a bag.
06:19No spray does that.
06:20No powder does that.
06:22No bait does that.
06:24The vacuum does it.
06:26Immediately.
06:27This afternoon.
06:28And it works right now.
06:30It does not need three weeks to take effect.
06:33It does not wait for them to eat something.
06:36The moment a roach or a capsule goes up that hose, it is out of your house and out of
06:42your life.
06:42When that man finished vacuuming that one kitchen, he had taken out something like 98 of every hundred roaches in
06:50the room, and it took him 30 minutes, and he had not sprayed a thing.
06:55So, let us do it properly, because there is a right way.
06:59You are going to be thorough in a way you have never been thorough about anything.
07:04Roaches want three things, and only three things, and if you know them, you know where to look.
07:10They want food.
07:12They want water.
07:13And they want a tight, dark crack to hide in where nothing can reach them.
07:18That is all.
07:20Everything they do is in service of those three, and every place they hide is a place that gives them
07:26one of the three.
07:26So, start under the kitchen sink.
07:30That is the very heart of it, because that is where the water is.
07:35Everything out of that cabinet, and look at the back corners and along the pipe where it goes through the
07:40wall.
07:41Then behind the refrigerator, and pull it out, all the way out.
07:45Do not just peek behind it.
07:47Behind that refrigerator is the best home a roach ever had.
07:51It is warm from the motor.
07:53It is damp from the coils.
07:55There are crumbs under it.
07:57And it is dark, and nobody ever, ever looks there.
08:01That is where you will find your worst of it, and that is where those ten egg capsules were.
08:08Then behind and under the stove.
08:10Then behind the dishwasher, and mind that gap along the side of it, because that gap is a highway.
08:17Then every cabinet and every drawer, and take the drawers all the way out,
08:22because roaches hide in the runners behind them, where you cannot see.
08:27Then along the toe kick, that little strip at the floor under your cabinets.
08:32Then the coffee maker, the toaster, anything with a warm dark inside.
08:37And you vacuum all of it.
08:40Live roaches.
08:41Dead roaches.
08:42And above all, every egg capsule you can find, every little brown seed-looking thing.
08:49Get down with a flashlight and look for them.
08:52And I want to be plain about the dead ones, too.
08:55Do not leave dead roaches lying about thinking they are harmless now.
08:59They are not.
09:00A dead roach still holds any egg capsule she was carrying, and the other roaches will eat
09:07the dead ones besides, and their leavings and their shed skins are what set folks to wheezing
09:13and sneezing in an infested house.
09:16All of it goes up the hose.
09:18Leave nothing.
09:20Now, two things about that vacuum, and both matter.
09:24The first is what you do the moment you shut it off.
09:27That bag, or that canister, is now full of hundreds of live roaches and unhatched eggs,
09:34and it is sitting in your house.
09:36So you do not set it down in the corner and go have your supper.
09:40You take it straight outside, this minute, and you empty it into a bag, and you tie that
09:46bag shut, and you put it in the trash away from the house, or you burn it.
09:51Do not open that canister inside.
09:54Take it out, and do it away from the door, because a few of them will be alive in there,
10:00and they would like nothing better than to walk right back in.
10:03The second thing is a word of care about the dust.
10:07When a vacuum takes up hundreds of roaches, it grinds them fine, and what comes out of that
10:13canister is a dust of shredded roach, and that dust is not good for your lungs.
10:19It is exactly the sort of thing that sets off a wheeze or an asthma.
10:24So wear a mask over your nose and mouth when you empty it, and empty it outdoors and upwind.
10:30That is not a fussy thing.
10:32That is a sensible thing, and the professionals do it.
10:36Now, the vacuum takes out the great mass of them in an afternoon.
10:40But a few always survive, and a few is enough to start over.
10:45So the vacuum alone is not the finish.
10:48It is the great blow that makes everything else possible.
10:52Now we starve out the rest.
10:54And this is where I have to tell you about the three things again, because now we take them away.
11:00Take away the water first, and this is the one nobody does, and it is the most powerful.
11:06A roach can go a long while without a bite to eat, but it cannot go long without water.
11:12Water is the thing they must have.
11:15So go and find every drop of water in your kitchen that sits overnight.
11:20That slow drip under the sink that you have been meaning to fix for two years,
11:25fix it this week, because that drip is what has been keeping them alive.
11:30Wipe the sink dry before you go to bed, every night, and I mean bone dry.
11:36Do not leave a wet dish rag in the sink overnight.
11:40Hang it up.
11:41Do not leave a pet's water bowl out all night.
11:44Put it up.
11:45Do not let water stand in the sink, or in a pot, or in the dish drainer.
11:50Wipe up the condensation behind the refrigerator.
11:53You take away their water for two weeks, and you will do more damage to that colony than a whole
11:59cabinet of sprays.
12:01They are not tough.
12:03Nothing that must drink every day is tough.
12:06They only seem tough because we keep handing them a drink.
12:10And let me put a finer point on that, because I want you to understand just how big a lever
12:15this is.
12:16Folks talk about roaches as though they were unkillable, as though they could live through anything,
12:22and it has become a sort of joke.
12:24But think about what that really means.
12:27If a creature is truly so hard to kill, then why has it chosen to live in the one warm,
12:33damp corner of your kitchen
12:35instead of anywhere else in the world?
12:37Because it is not tough at all.
12:40It is desperate.
12:41It is living in that exact spot, behind that exact refrigerator, under that exact leaking pipe,
12:48because that is the only place it can survive.
12:51It has no choice.
12:53That is the whole picture flipped around, and it should change how you feel walking into that kitchen.
12:59You are not fighting an unkillable creature.
13:02You are fighting a fragile one that has found the one place in your home that keeps it alive,
13:07and it is entirely in your power to take that place away.
13:11Fix the drip and dry the sink, and you have not killed a single roach with your own hand,
13:17and yet you have done them more harm than a year of spraying.
13:21That is not fighting them.
13:23That is simply refusing to feed them, and it is the surest thing in this whole business.
13:28Second, take away the food.
13:30And here I mean take it away entirely, not tidily.
13:34Everything that a roach could eat goes into glass or tin with a lid that seals.
13:40The flour, the sugar, the cereal, the crackers, the dry dog food,
13:45all of it out of the cardboard and paper it came in, and into jars.
13:50A roach walks straight through a cardboard box like it was a door standing open.
13:55And then the crumbs.
13:59Sweep every night.
14:00Wipe the counter every night.
14:03Wash the dishes before bed and do not leave one plate in the sink.
14:08Get under the stove and behind the toaster where the crumbs have been collecting since you moved in.
14:14Take the trash out at night and keep the can closed.
14:18A grease spot behind the stove is a full meal to a roach.
14:24Third, take away the hiding place.
14:27And this is what makes it permanent.
14:30Every roach in your house is living in a crack.
14:33Behind the cabinet, along the baseboard, where the pipe goes through the wall under the sink.
14:40In the gap behind the trim.
14:42In the hollow of the wall.
14:44So you go around with caulk and you close those cracks up.
14:49The gap where the pipe enters the wall?
14:52Stuff it with steel wool and caulk over it, because they cannot chew through steel wool.
14:59The seams in the back of the cabinets.
15:01The baseboards.
15:03The gap along the counter.
15:05And every crack you close is a home they can never go back to.
15:10This is the slow, patient work.
15:13And it is the work that means you never have to do all this again.
15:18A house with no cracks is a house with no roaches.
15:22And it stays that way after you have forgotten all about them.
15:27Now, boric acid.
15:29Because I know some of you want something to put down,
15:32and I would rather tell you the right one than have you buy the wrong one.
15:37Boric acid is the old, plain one.
15:40It is cheap, and it does work.
15:43It is a fine white powder, and the roach walks through it and gets it on himself and cleans himself,
15:50the way they do, and eats it, and it kills him.
15:54And he takes it back to the nest on his body besides.
15:58But you must use it right, or it is worthless, and near everybody uses it wrong.
16:04You do not sprinkle it around in a thick white line.
16:09A roach will walk around a thick pile of powder the same as you would walk around a snowdrift.
16:15You want the barest dusting, so thin you can hardly see it,
16:21puffed back into the cracks and the dark voids where they run.
16:26Under the sink at the back.
16:28Behind the toe kick.
16:30In the wall void behind the switch plate.
16:33Where they walk, not where you can see it.
16:37And here is the safety, and I will not skip it.
16:41Boric acid must be kept away from children and from pets, absolutely.
16:47It goes in the cracks and the voids where small hands and curious noses cannot get to it,
16:54and never out on an open floor or a counter where food is.
16:59Never near where food is prepared.
17:02If you have little ones crawling, be very careful indeed about where you put it,
17:07or leave it out altogether and do the rest of the work.
17:11The rest of the work is what carries this anyway.
17:15Now I am going to tell you something honest,
17:17and it is the sort of thing a man selling you something would never say.
17:22If your infestation is very bad,
17:25and I mean the kind where the wall moves when you turn the light on,
17:29then all of what I have told you will knock it down hard, but it may not finish it.
17:35And there is a plain reason for that, and it is worth knowing.
17:39The professionals have a thing they use that does not kill roaches at all.
17:45It stops them from breeding.
17:47It is a growth regulator, and the young ones that get into it simply never grow up into breeding adults.
17:54So the colony cannot replace itself, and it dies out.
17:58That is the real finisher on a bad infestation, and it is not something I have in my barn,
18:05and it is not something I would tell you to go and mix up in your kitchen with children in
18:10the house.
18:11So here is my honest counsel.
18:14Do all of this.
18:16Vacuum them out, eggs and all.
18:19Take away the water.
18:21Take away the food.
18:22Seal the cracks.
18:23And if you do that, and the roaches are still with you in a month,
18:27then call a licensed man and let him finish it,
18:30and you will have made his job ten times easier,
18:33and his treatment ten times more effective,
18:35because he will not be spraying over the top of five hundred eggs.
18:39I would rather tell you the truth about where my knowledge ends,
18:43than let you fight a losing war for a year out of stubbornness.
18:47That is not wisdom.
18:49That is only pride.
18:50And pride does not kill roaches.
18:53Now, why does nobody talk about the vacuum?
18:56And I want to say this careful,
18:57because I am not telling you there is a scheme,
19:00a room of men hiding the truth about a shop vacuum.
19:04It is quieter than that, and it needs no plotting at all.
19:08There is no money in the vacuum.
19:10You already own it.
19:12Nobody sells it to you again next month.
19:14But there is very steady money in a bottle of spray that must be bought again,
19:19and again, and again, all season, every season, for as long as you have roaches.
19:26And so the spray gets talked about, and the vacuum does not,
19:30not because anyone hid it, but because there was never a dollar in mentioning it.
19:34The knowing grows over like a path nobody walks.
19:38Well, let us walk it again.
19:41Here is what I would ask of you.
19:43This weekend, pull out your refrigerator.
19:45Just that.
19:46Pull it out and get down with a flashlight,
19:49and look at what is behind it,
19:51and look for those little brown seed-looking capsules.
19:54And then get the vacuum, and take them out of your house.
19:57And then come down to the comments, and tell me.
20:00Tell me what you found back there,
20:02and how many egg capsules,
20:04and whether the kitchen was quieter that night.
20:07I read them, and other folks read them too,
20:10and everyone who reports back
20:12gives heart to the next one standing in a dark kitchen,
20:15afraid to turn the light on.
20:17And the next time we sit down together,
20:19I am finally paying off a promise I have made you four times now,
20:23and it is past time.
20:25There is a reason an old farmhouse
20:27holds its heat through a bitter winter night,
20:30while the new house next door goes cold before morning.
20:33It is not luck, it is not a better furnace,
20:36and it is not magic.
20:38It is built right into the walls,
20:40and I have been walking past it my whole life,
20:43and I am going to show you the whole of it.
20:45That one is next.
20:46You have my word.
20:48So get the vacuum, pull out the refrigerator,
20:51take the eggs, and not just the roaches,
20:54empty it outside with a mask on,
20:56fix the drip, dry the sink at night,
20:59put the food in jars,
21:00and seal the cracks they live in.
21:02The people who built this country with their hands knew that,
21:06and we are only just starting to remember it.
21:08Thank you so much.
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