The kitchen and bathroom are the two rooms that cockroaches are attracted the most. That is because cockroaches are always in search of food and water just like every other living creature, which leads them to your kitchen for a snack.
There are several things you can do to get rid of roaches in your kitchen, and make sure that they never come back. The first thing you need to do is choose your weapon of choice and pick a pesticide to put down throughout the kitchen (recommendations below).
Then you will need to check for and fill any small cracks or crevices in your home that cockroaches use as entryways. The final step is to clean the kitchen thoroughly, and keep it clean, to deter more cockroaches from coming back.
The thing you need to do first is put down a cockroach killer throughout your kitchen. You have several options here but there are differences between them which I will describe. You want to apply the roach killer everywhere you can in the kitchen. For example, along the floorboards, in the cabinets, under the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher. Basically, everywhere that roaches can scurry you want to make sure is covered with pesticide.
Boric acid: This is usually my first recommendation (but not for the kitchen) because it is cheap, highly effective, leaves little residue, and is not harmful to your pets or children. It is a chalk colored powder that comes in a bottle and you just clip off the top and that lets you inject the powder all along the areas that you want to. I like to inject a little along the baseboards of the wall since that is where roaches like to crawl. The drawback is that boric acid powder can be easily moved by wind or foot traffic and doesn’t stay in place for a long period of time.
Cockroach gel or paste: Cockroach gel is also extremely effective at killing cockroaches and is actually my favorite cockroach killer for the kitchen. Cockroach gel’s advantage over boric acid powder is that it does not get dispersed as easily (one application can work for a couple months). But its drawback is that it leaves a residue behind on whatever surface you apply it to. Some of these gels can discolor your floor with a black or brown mark, which is fine in the garage or basement, but obviously not in the kitchen. So be careful with that.
Here is a little trick that one of my readers actually told me about: Apply the cockroach gel to a small piece of cardboard and then slide the cardboard under your refrigerator, put it in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, or wherever. That will save your floors and counters from getting stained.