Tip #5

Cockroach Prevention: Realizing that your freezer is your best friend.

It is common knowledge here, that, if a single dirty dish is left unattended in your sink, it will draw creatures from every corner of Bonaire to your little, humble, and mostly-clean kitchen. To prevent this, the obvious answer is to immediately clean every dish after it is soiled. That is, of course, the most logical solution.

But who said that logic coincides with real life?

After cooking in my hot, mosquito-infested kitchen, I simply don't have any desire to go back into that kitchen and wash the plates we just used. I'd much rather watch my McDreamy play with Bronsito: wrestling, bench pressing, tickling, etc. It's so rare that we get good family moments together, so I'm rather selfish about them when they occur.

Pretty good justification, right?

Anyway, I do not wash my dishes as they are dirtied.

But that is why I have a freezer. You may think that they are for ice cream, meat, and any other perishable item that doesn't fit into your fridge, but that was before you experienced Bonaire. Now you realize that it is a dirty-dish safe. Any unwashed dishes can be stored in there, for weeks at a time, without alarming any pesky rodents…leaving you plenty of time to procrastinate, I mean prioritize, your many motherly duties.

P.S. On the occasion that your freezer and fridge are both full, and you still don’t feel like becoming the thanksgiving meal for your herd of mosquitoes, leave the soiled dishes in the sink (rinse them out, at least), and quickly spray around the corners of your kitchen with whatever variety bug killer you prefer - Raid/Plagatox/DET - the possibilities are endless. Make sure you do this at a time when no one will be entering the kitchen, though…you don’t want to accidentally poison any non-creepy-crawly specimen.

Also - just as an FYI - my kitchen is seperate from my house, so the mosquitoes are only a problem in there, not in our main living area. Maybe it is egotistical of me, thinking you all care about that aspect of my living, but just in the slight chance that you were worried, hopefully I put your fears to rest.