Roaches are highly durable, resilient creatures that can survive in the worst environment. They are extremely efficient at moving places since they can hide in personal belongings and travel to other homes with people.
Roaches can quickly breed and form a heavy infestation once they find entry to your home. Therefore, when people bring bugs to your home, you must take immediate pest control measures to ensure these little scavengers do not form a colony.
Guests, neighbors, and friends can accidentally bring roaches into your house. These roaches lay eggs in your clothes, bags, shoes, or food boxes, nesting in your home.
Let’s learn how people can bring roaches to your home and how you can avoid a full-blown infestation.
Can Visitors Bring Cockroaches To Your House?
Visitors can bring cockroaches into your house by unknowingly carrying them in their bags. Therefore, even the cleanest of homes are not immune to roaches.
According to the University of Florida, the German species of roaches is the most likely to travel to different houses. These unsanitary scavengers of human communities heavily depend on humans for food and shelter. They use your luggage and bags as shelter and feast on various materials.
When your guests come over, the roaches in their bags enter your home and quickly spread around. Unfortunately, a female cockroach can produce various egg sacks per year. Hence, the bugs rapidly spread, forming a full-blown infestation in your house.
Can Roaches Travel To Different Houses?
Cockroaches can travel from house to house, searching for food, moisture, and shelter. These primary sources of survival are the core reason behind their movement between homes.
For example, if your neighbor has roaches but destroys roach shelters, limits food, and uses pest control measures, the little critters will seek shelter elsewhere.
If your home has potential roach attractants, it will encourage them to enter your home via the gaps in the walls, cracks, crevices, and other insect entry points. Roaches can also enter homes through visitors as they hide in various items that guests may carry into your home.
These items include:
- Storage containers
- Pre-used furniture
- Clothing
- Luggage
- Bags, wallets, purses
- Rugs or drapes
- Cardboard boxes
Cockroaches are incredibly fond of storage boxes or old equipment no longer in use. If your guest’s home has an infestation problem, they are very likely to bring roaches to your home through their belongings. These bugs crawl out of their belongings and form a nest at your place.
How To Tell if Guests Brought Roaches?
Watching a roach scurry from the visitor’s belongings is the easiest way to spot the problem. But it isn’t always this easy to guess if someone is bringing bugs to your home.
There are numerous other ways to tell if visitors have brought roaches. Here are five tips for spotting the problem:
Check the Items They Brought
If visitors bring belongings such as luggage, bundles, or boxes, you should check over these things before storing them away. You should look for the following things to check if guests have brought roaches with them:
- Brown streaks over fabrics
- Roach droppings
- The musty scent of pheromones
- Roach exoskeletons
- Broken wings, legs, or antennas
- Roach eggs smeared over surfaces
These indications can help you spot if the visitors have an infestation problem or if their belongings have been in contact with roaches.
Look Out for Allergic Reactions
Roaches threaten people with asthma, bronchitis, and other breathing problems. According to a study, people allergic to cockroach excrement may experience watery eyes, sneezing, congestion, etc.
If visitors bring roaches, the cockroach allergens can cause these symptoms. Moreover, heavy roach infestations contribute to asthmatic attacks as asthma patients are more sensitive to allergens.
When visitors leave your home, you should look for the following allergic reactions:
- Wheezing
- Recurring cough
- Difficulty breathing
If these symptoms appear shortly after your guests leave, you must rule out other potential irritants such as dust.
Once you rule out other irritants but continue to notice the symptoms, roaches have moved into your home because their excrements, nymphs, and skin sheddings can cause these health problems.
Check Your Health
Cockroaches can transfer pathogens that can cause various diseases, including food poisoning, diarrhea, typhoid, etc.
If there is a large cockroach infestation, these scavengers transfer pathogenic microbes to food, kitchen appliances, utensils, etc.
They crawl over your belongings, transferring disease-causing agents. Therefore, you should check your health after your guests leave. If you experience health issues, it could be due to the presence of roaches.
Ask Visitors If They Have Had Roaches
If you’re on good terms with the visitors, it is best to ask them about a roach infestation. For example, if someone comes to stay over for a few days, you should politely ask them about a roach infestation to know if there is a risk of them transferring roaches to your home.
Roach Exoskeletons
The exoskeleton is the external skeleton of roaches. When their size increases, cockroaches shed this external skeleton to grow a new one.
Roaches only leave their exoskeleton in places where they have lived. If your guests have a roach problem, the cockroaches might shed their exoskeleton on their belongings. Therefore, when your guests arrive, it’s best to look out for excrement and roach exoskeleton.
Can Cockroaches Travel on Clothes?
Cockroaches can travel on clothes because they reside in cabinets, closets, and drawers. They like to stay in dark places. Sometimes, cockroaches survive in pockets or inner linings of heavy coats.
Besides this, female roaches nestle in pockets to lay their eggs. If you thoroughly check the pockets and inner linings of thick fabrics, you may even spot a few egg sacs. Baby cockroaches also reside inside the pockets.
It’s challenging for them to hide in light clothes such as t-shirts or leggings. Therefore, it’s best to check clothes such as coats, scarves, hats, jackets, etc. Moreover, if people keep their clothes away in cardboard boxes, they are more likely to have roaches.
Roaches feast on cardboard, providing them with moisture, food, and shelter. Plus, they hide in the clothes.
So when people wear thick fabrics to someone’s home, these roaches can quickly spread to their home, traveling through the fabric to fabric contact.
Can Cockroaches Travel in Bags?
Baggage and luggage are tightly packed with belongings such as clothes, shoes, etc. cockroaches love to reside in tightly packed spaces with fabric. Therefore, suitcases and bags are their favorite spot.
They can live in the luggage for months, feeding on fabric. But unfortunately, female roaches also lay eggs in dark, tightly packed spaces. Therefore, luggage acts as a breeding ground for cockroaches. This way, a small roach colony nestles in suitcases.
When guests visit your place, they can unknowingly transfer roaches through their baggage. Adult cockroaches quickly scurry out of luggage when you unpack the bags.
Thus, you can also politely ask your guests about a roach infestation or tell them about spotting exoskeleton, roach excrement, or egg sacks on the luggage.
Once you express concern about a roach infestation, you can use a pesticide over the suitcase and thoroughly sanitize it to keep the roaches from moving into your home.
How To Prevent Roaches From Traveling Home With You?
Since cockroaches can travel through clothes, luggage, and other belongings, it’s best to take preventive measures to avoid bringing roaches to your home. When you visit someone who has a roach infestation or if they see you, you must take some cautions to prevent cockroaches from infesting your home.
Here are some tips:
- Inspect your belongings for roach eggs
- Ask your host about pest control measures
- Keep an eye out for roaches
- Look out for baby roaches, egg sacs, and roach excrements
If you detect the presence of roaches, it’s best to talk to your host. You can also go home and use a pest repellent spray on your belongings before storing them in your home.
How To Get Rid of Cockroaches When They Move Into Your Home?
If your visitors have brought some of them, you can take a few measures to help get rid of cockroaches. However, cockroaches are resilient creatures, and it’s challenging to eliminate their colonies. Therefore, it’s best to take preventive measures to ensure they do not form a heavy infestation.
Here are some pro tips to get rid of roaches from your home:
- Clean up water sources such as sinks, leaky pipes, and bathrooms.
- Keep away food in airtight containers.
- Thoroughly disinfect luggage.
- Hang the clothes instead of folding them.
- Block off insect entry points.
- Regularly dispose of the garage.
- Keep your trash cans covered.
- Ask the guests to keep their belongings in a storeroom.
- Use baits, pesticides, and repellents to keep the roaches away from your home.
- If you spot more bugs, consult a professional pest control authority.
- Use silicone caulking to seal cracks and crevices.
Expert Advice:
If you visit a home with roaches or someone brings bugs, it’s best to take some precautions to avoid an infestation.
- Thoroughly inspect your clothes, bags, and shoes
- Wash your clothing in warm water
- Clean your luggage before storing it away
- Disinfect your belongings before keeping them in the cupboards
FAQs
Is It Easy To Bring Roaches Home?
It is very easy to bring roaches home because they can travel through your luggage and clothing. Baby roaches can quickly hide in your clothes pockets and travel around with you. Moreover, cockroaches look for food and moisture.
Once you enter your home, these scavengers look for tiny spaces to hide. Then they form a colony and hunt for food in your home, which is usually very accessible.
Can Cockroaches From Neighbors Come To My House?
Roaches can efficiently travel from your neighbor’s home to your home. They travel through vents, electrical pathways, sewer pipes, air ducts, sinks, and cracks present between the walls.
Roaches can also travel through the wall outlets and enter your home if it has roach attractants such as moisture, pet supplies, food, warmth, dark places, etc.
Can You Bring Cockroaches When You Move Houses?
It is possible to bring cockroaches when you move houses because they hide in your storage boxes, baggage, luggage, clothing, and other items. Therefore, when you pack your things and move houses, you must inspect your belongings for roach eggs, baby nymphs, roach excretions, brown markings, etc.
You should also launder your linens, clothes, and other fabrics. Shake out electronics and shoes. Before packing, you should also vacuum the furniture, such as beds, sofas, and couches.
Once you move your home, make sure to use pesticides and roach traps before you start to unpack.
How to Avoid Bringing Roaches When Moving?
You can avoid bringing roaches when you’re moving houses by checking your kitchen appliances, electronics, large furniture, linens, pillows, cardboard boxes, plants, pots, gardening equipment, etc.
You should also use pesticides to disinfect your items before unpacking. Besides this, you should wash your clothing correctly. Then, deep clean all the items to avoid a roach infestation.
Use plastic containers instead of cardboard boxes. Make sure to seal the water leaks in your new home. Use silicone caulking around cracks to ensure roaches do not enter your new home.
Finally, keep all sorts of roach attractants away. These measures can help you avoid roaches when you move into a new home.
Conclusion
Cockroaches are unhygienic scavengers looking for food, shelter, and moisture. They can hop onto clothing, baggage, luggage, and other items to get a free ride into your home. If you think someone is bringing roaches to your home, here are some steps to help eliminate the problem.
- Stay vigilant about roach prevention measures.
- Inspect the items for roach eggs, nymphs, and other indications
- Wash your clothes
- Vacuum your home
- Use a pest repellent spray over items
- Lower your home’s humidity levels
- Keep the food stored in airtight containers
By taking preventive measures, you can keep visitors from bringing roaches to your home. Even if they accidentally bring bugs to your home, you can thoroughly inspect their bags for insects and eggs to stay safe from a potential future roach infestation.