Home-made “bombs” aren’t lethal, let you swap insect invaders for a pleasant smell.

With spring half-way done, it won’t be long until the weather gets hot and humid in Japan. But while the summer months are perfect for a trip to the beach or one of Japan’s rooftop beer gardens, things can be quite a bit unpleasant at home, as the warmer part of the year is also when you’re most likely to have cockroaches showing up.

Disgusting to look at and hard to kill, the ideal solution, of course, is to prevent roaches from hanging out in your home in the first place. To that end, Japanese Twitter user @adreamorreality has a simple, non-chemical solution.

You only need two things (or three, if you count a spoon for scooping): dried peppermint, and empty tea bags, which in Japan you can pick up for less than a buck a pack at 100 yen stores. Fill the tea bags with peppermint, close them up, and place them wherever you’re concerned about cockroaches making an unwanted appearance, such as your kitchen or closets.

While @adreamorreality affectionately calls the bundles “mint bombs,” they’re not explosive booby traps. Instead, the scent of the oils present in the peppermint is highly repulsive to cockroaches, and so the packets work as non-lethal repellants. In spots that are ordinarily especially attractive to the pests, such as underneath the sink, @adreamorreality recommends leaving two mint pouches.

@adreamorreality says she used to encounter cockroaches in her home several times a year, but since enacting her “mint bomb” defense plan, she hasn’t seen a single one. That definitely makes this deterrent sound like a great idea, instead of waiting until after you spot a cockroach and relying on freezing sprays, vacuum guns, or the courage of other people to take care of the problem.

Source: Hachima Kiko, Twitter/@adreamorreality
Top image: Wikipedia/Tagishsimon (edited by SoraNews24)