I noticed them first about a year ago, under the sink in the kitchen where my trash is. I didn’t think they were roaches at first, just some sort of funky Minnesota summer bug—they reminded me of brown box elders and weren’t particularly bothersome.
Once, though, I came into the kitchen and saw two. It was hot, I was grumpy, so I poured bleach all over my kitchen floor in a fit hoping that would help. It did kill the two and gave me a bleach smelling apartment for a few days.
Months passed and it seemed like they were gone. I chalked it up to summer. It’s humid, I don’t have central air, and this building is old.
Then, this past spring, I noticed them again. Here and there. I knew something wasn’t quite right. They weren’t the type of roaches I had pictured {giant, black, scary PSA style}, which is why I couldn’t identify them for so long, but instead a smaller, more resilient German roach.
So, the process of trying to get rid of them—which was strangely more frustrating and scary than realizing I had them– began. My building management isn’t incredibly responsive {yay, monopolies!} and I knew from the pluming experience I had when I first moved in that things might be slow. First, I was asked to send a picture of the roach. I’m fully convinced this is a management stall tactic. Eventually, though, after some back and forth plans were made. Two days before they sprayed I received a page long list of how to prepare. This involved me clearing out every sing drawer and cabinet in both my kitchen and bathroom.
Four times. Because, each time the roaches came back, I had to have them spray again.
I was frustrated and a little scared. I’d think they’d be gone, come home, and find one perched on my living room blind, inside the drawer of my desk, or {the very worst} in the same kitchen cabinet where my pretty, Anthropologie latte bowls live. Shortly before the final spray I called my very first friend from college, Arlene. I had a sense that she could help me and she would have a solution. Relief spread over me as she began telling me her homemade remedy for deterring roaches after years of living in New Orleans.
“You’ll need bay leaves and essential oils. Fresh bay leaves.”
For weeks, I laid out fresh bay leaves along the pretty, white baseboards of each room. I diffused two essential oils, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.
Slowly, slowly I stopped seeing them. Except, at night sometimes I’d think I’d notice one and only realize it was an imperfection on my hardwood floor or a dust bunny. “You’re not crazy” my sweet friend who survived mice last year told me, “after we had mice I thought I saw them everywhere. My eyes played tricks on me.”
When I came home from Las Vegas I didn’t see anymore. When I came home from New Orleans I hadn’t seen one either. I fully expect them to come back, because once roaches are in they are hard to get out of a building, but for now I’m enjoying my reprise from their visits.
Art deco charm has its many cons and roaches and mercurial pluming are just part of the package.
