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No Wasps or Roaches in Your Mailbox
This spring/summer we had some unwelcome guests in our mailbox - other than bills. A family of wasps had decided that our large mailbox was the perfect home. We did not agree.
Going to check the mail became a bit of an action/horror movie event, filled with suspense. Would the wasps swarm us as we reached for our junk mail? Would they fly into the open window of our trucks and terrorize the kiddos before we could get everyone out of their car seats and evacuate the car?
We developed interesting techniques for checking the mail. So interesting that if anyone saw us (good thing we live in the woods) they probably would have thought that we had lost.our.minds. Seriously.
After weeks of debate of whether or not to spray the box and then have the mail we brought into the house (and that our kiddos spread around) covered in toxic pesticides, we decided enough was enough. I looked online for an essential oil remedy that would eliminate wasps without exposing our family to the secondary threat of nasty chemicals.
It was hard to find much information online about wasp repellent made with essential oils. I found one recipe for a kind of similar situation, but I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand. So I improvised. I pulled out my peppermint and lemon essential oils and invested in a $1 bag of cotton balls. I doused each cotton ball heavily in peppermint oil and in lemon oil and tossed the cotton balls into the mailbox. I used three cotton balls.
The next time we checked the mail, the wasps had checked out of 'Hotel de Mailbox' and found a new home elsewhere. We also had minty fresh smelling mail for a week or two. Eventually the minty fresh smell subsided, but the wasps have stayed away all summer. Yay!
A month or so after our success, my parents complained of roaches appearing in their mailbox. After seeing our success, I quickly took the oils and cotton balls to their house. My mom was concerned the mail person would think the cotton balls were a bomb (which has actually happened before, but that is another story for another day... okay, it was one of those national weather service balloons that randomly land and whoever finds it has to return it by dropping it in a mailbox). The other concern was that they would complain about the strong odor. Well, none of the above happened - no bomb concerns, no complaints over odor. BUT, what did happen is that the roaches disappeared.
So, in summary, if you want to rid your mailbox or other small area of insect activity without industrial chemicals, try dousing cotton balls in peppermint and lemon essential oils. If you only have peppermint oil, try that by itself.
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No Wasps or Roaches in Your Mailbox
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