Many of you may be seeing some ants….. it’s that time of the year around the house where they are going to come out and walk around your place. Some of you = inside, and others, well, outside. I saw ONE ant in my kitchen dining area the other day and you should have seen me – I was on that table so fast…….. it was the only ant I saw and have seen since that day, but I know the rest of the “family” are hanging around somewhere.
There are a few of the solutions that have worked for me – and that I have personally used, depending on what I have on-hand at the house.
Baby Powder or Borax…..sprinkled around the ant-ish area, you will find that it might effectively disrupt them from coming around.
But, it also comes with a warning – if you have pets, or kiddos, be careful using these two items because they are dangerous to ingest, and inhale.
Borax also works for Cockroaches – I sprinkled Borax outside my house, in between sidewalk cracks, outside the garage, and anywhere I knew they would cross. If you have a water meter outside (most of us do), they like to sit in there – it’s moist and dark at night so it’s the perfect hang-out spot. Take a cup of borax, and mix it with a cup of water and a half cup sugar. Then DUMP it in the water meter box when it’s dark, at night…….. they’ll scatter, but in the process, they’ll ingest it – and it makes their insides blow up very gassy to the point that they die. Sounds like a bad science experiment …but this is what I do personally every month or so.
Coffee Grounds –Sprinkle in the area of ants – they hate the smell.
Herbs or Spices , Salt or Pepper- You can put Bay Leaves in your cabinets…….. or sprinkle Cinnamon/Garlic around your home. If you’re a huge Chili Powder person, try that too — it deters them due to the smell.
You can also use regular black pepper, OR, just straight up table salt – sprinkle around baseboards, window sills, etc.
Vinegar & Apple Cider Vinegar –A mixture of 50/50 Vinegar & Water OR 50/50 Apple Cider Vinegar & Water is the best thing you could use. Almost all of us have Vinegar – we use it to clean our floors, toilets, I even use it in lieu of fabric softener in my wash. Like the other things above, ants HATE the smell. Soak cotton balls in it and let them sit in your cabinet in small trays (tops of pill jars work pretty swell).
Dryer Sheets – can be generic –Dryer sheets work just perfect too – lay them around your home, slowly it will allow them to disappear. The sheets contain certain “compounds” that, although they are very pretty smelling, are toxic to bugs.
Anything that works for you? PLEASE share with us!
Where we use to live I used chalk,I would grind a box or 2 of white chalk and walk around the outside of the house and pour out the chalk (Very close to the house). The ants would not cross the chalk. Weird but it worked.
When you’re RV’ing, ants are always a major problem. My folks were told to sprinkle ajax/comet/bartenders friend/etc. on the counters. Bugs crawl through it, clean themselves and it acts like tiny knives in their intestinal system to kill them. Works, but obvious cautions around pets and kids…although pets generally recognize it as something they don’t want to eat!!
Cream of Wheat – sprinkle it in the area where the ants are located, they inject, and they die. The cream of wheat expands in their bellies.
I never knew that and have TONS of thats stuff!
I use instant grits- same as the cream of wheat, the ants take it back to the colony and eat it so it takes care of all of them.