Ants in the house can be quite annoying. It’s hard to get rid of the suckers. Ant spray kills those on contact but does little to get rid of the ant problem. In fact, using ant spray might cause ants to start new colonies. It is satisfying to kill those jokers on contact though.
So I have a new strategy for getting rid of the ants in the house. First is to cleanup and keep it clean. If ants aren’t finding crumbs on the floor or juice boxes on the couch, then their food source will be eliminated. I’ve never been one to clean every day. I plan on cleaning my kitchen and sweeping the floors each day.
I want to control the ants in our house and yard with organic solutions. We have a daughter and cats so we really are seeking solutions that will be safe for them. I have been reading all sorts of home remedies for getting rid of ants. I will try one at a time and document my results. One tip I read reminded me of what my dad used to do. He would take scalding hot water and pour it on ant mounds. I haven’t seen an ant bed in recent memory. Our ants seem to just have small holes in the ground. It makes it harder to find their nests.
Hopefully a little bit of cleaning everyday and some organic solutions will get rid of our ant problem.
What I used to do is lay a line of cayenne pepper over wherever was a busy ant highway, they won’t cross cayenne pepper. Hope you get rid of them!
For controlling ants in the house, put a little cornmeal in the cracks where they can come in. They will take it back to the colony, eat it and it will expand and kill them. They can’t digest it. I have used this in my home. We get periodic infestations of tiny ants especially if it is extremely wet out like this past winter. The cornmeal seems to work at getting rid of them quickly. Hope this helps.
We’ve collected a few “home remedies”, especially ones that are not toxic to people or pets at the pest control article on the Home wikia. I’ll add Brian’s about cornmeal. (We already had the one for cayenne pepper.) And we’d be happy to have other contributors stop by with any useful solutions you’ve found.