How to Get Rid of Ants: A Bane of Houses

Ants are one of nature’s most impressive creatures. They’re strong, dedicated, and obedient to the hive mind that they will defend with their lives. They’re also kind of gross and the last thing that you want in your house. Ants are also difficult to prevent from entering inside and once inside, they’re difficult to kill. Here are some tips that have always been great when I’ve been dealing with our pesty neighbors.

How to Keep Ants Out:

• Clean up after yourself. Ants are attracted to food and water (they need to eat and drink, after all) and so if you make sure that your floors are clean, ants are less likely to stop by and never leave.


• Ants can get in through holes in your walls, windows, screens, doors, and foundations. Any sort of vent or gap between the inside of your house and nature is an open door to them. Plug these holes and you should see the numbers fall.


• Ants don’t like the smells and flavors of certain things. If you create barricades out of dryer sheets, salt, coffee grounds, or cinnamon then the ants will avoid them and not come into your home. Spearmint leaves and cayenne pepper work too.


• Ants also hate the scent of lemon. Bring on the Pledge!


• Spray the ground around your house with a solution of water and peppermint, repeat after each time it rains.


• Ants love pet food and all of the crumbs your pet will drop while eating. Place the food bowl in a moat of soapy water and ants will stay away, even if it’s outside.


• You can disrupt the ant’s path of travel by spraying vinegar on it. It will erase the scent of the previous ant and confuse the rest.

Now if the ants actually get into your home, we have another issue that takes some different approaches. You need to poison these ants and make sure that they die so they don’t keep coming back. Use a combination of sugar (to lure the ants) and borax (to kill them) to makes sure you get them all. Soak cotton balls in the mixture you’ve made and and leave them around inside of upturned jar lids. The ants will eat and die and the lids allow for easy clean up. The other move is to just vacuum up all the ants. This will kill any you find but make sure you get them all or the survivors will come back with friends!

If you’d like to read more, the link is here.

from Finbar O’Neill’s Real Estate Development Website http://ift.tt/1wqIg48

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1F8kJqB