ants ants ants ants ants ANTS

[houseforjoy]

everywhere ants!!!!!! i have never had an infestation this bad. YUCK!! i can sweep mulitple times a day, but with 4 kids, one of whom is an all day snacker, i can't keep my floor clean at all times, so they just keep coming for the free food. I have tried DE, a EO spray, borax. the problem with DE is with the constant sweeping it get swept up. so i have to reapply it constantly and i just can't keep up with everything.

What else can i do to get rid of them?? spring has only JUST started here so i am terrified of this being an all summer long issue

help me pleeeeeeeeeease!!

[NeshamaMama]

This doesn't help with the sweeping at all but we had good success with lining the baseboards with cinnamon.

I hate ants :yuck. Really hope you can find a solution that works for you! :hug

[BeckaBlue]

I've got thick layers of cinnamon along wherever they're coming in and wipe the ants up with vinegar too.

ETA: the cinnamon (or chili powder) burns them so they don's cross. The vinegar gets rid of the trail scent.

[LovinBeingMommy]

Is cinnamon safe for cats/dogs? We have ants that move into the bathroom every spring. :yuck

[hopeforchange]

I've had ants in every place I've lived, across three states. I've tried every natural remedy I've read about and they don't work. An exterminator is the only thing that gets rid of them. Ants are different from each other. Some you need to bait, others you need to just kill. Your best bet is to call pest control. :)

[Starfox]

All the ants I ever had terro (sweet bait) killed, until we moved to Michigan. Then they didn't want sweet bait, they wanted savory. So I mixed up some borax with peanutbutter, put it in a little box with holes cut.in it and put it Where the kids couldn't get it but where the ants could. Dead in 24 hours. All of them.

Ants are different everywhere. :yes

[houseforjoy]

hmm i will try the cinn. thing as i have a bunch

our ants like cheerios, pizza crusts, maple syrup spills, muffin wrappers, and well let's just say so far they have eaten anything and everything that has been on my kitchen floor:shifty

[BeckaBlue]

hmm i will try the cinn. thing as i have a bunch

our ants like cheerios, pizza crusts, maple syrup spills, muffin wrappers, and well let's just say so far they have eaten anything and everything that has been on my kitchen floor:shifty


Ours like goldfish in particular. :giggle
The ants we have I wouldn't do chemical kills. I would in FL, or anywhere with fire ants, but the ones we've got are pretty harmless :shrug3.

[houseforjoy]

i also just remembered i have Cinn. EO. i wonder if i put that along the front and back door if that would also help keep them out:think is that how they get in? or can they get in other ways?? they can probably also get in through open/screen windows huh:think

[MaybeGracie]

We had them very bad for a couple summers, and the cinnamon did the trick the second year. Now I lay it down in front of the doors and along the baseboards where I see them right away, and it works so well. People are always asking about it when they come in :giggle but it's worth it to keep those awful things out of my kitchen.

[houseforjoy]

well i just put cinn. oil all over and at the very least it made our house smell really yummy:giggle

[jamiebrewha]

I've noticed ours come in windows. It's killing me to have windows closed but I can't deal with the ants. I guess I'll try some cinnamon in the window sills?

Glad to know it's not just me though!

[Teacher Mom]

I put the cinnamon down and they rerouted......I couldn't tak eit anymore and clorox bathroom cleanered them :shifty

[houseforjoy]

i cinn oiled the entire kitchen AND bathroom since that is where they were yesterday morning :hunh. i also think i am gonna put some DE down and some borax trap cuz i still see a few today. (although i haven't swept up a bazillion like normal)

[Heather Micaela]

What kind of ants? If they are the tiny black argentenian ants that plague where I live, the best bet is the gel bait close to the source and know you have to do it when it gets hot or rain. NOTHING else I have tried works.

And to attack the live ones we DO NOT use poison because then the new ones will not go to the bait (plus who wants that in the home?). Simple Green or other mulit-surface (usually even orgaic) cleaners will kill the horde AND clean the house in one step without introducing toxins. And the pea sized amount you put at the ant entrance is not usually in the way of your family.

[houseforjoy]

http://www.wikihow.com/Kill-Sugar-Ants

these are them i think. they are small brown ants.

[FaithHopeLove]

You've got to get their trails erased or they'll keep coming back. We just combatted ours with a spray bottle of 50% vinegar and 50% water, sprayed all over the floor where they were coming in. My house smelled like pickles for a couple of weeks, but eventually it worked. Our ants liked carbs/grease and they actually removed grout in a tile floor bit by bit to come in! Made a good size hole in it!

[Fallin2Grace]

Ants...ugh. i feel your pain. we recently started getting them too.

There have been some great suggestions here.

One thing i did this week when i noticed them was to take a spray bottle. Fill it up with pinesol and water (my floors are laminent wood). (3:1 ratio, (pinsol=3, hot water =1). The smell is kind of strong but much to my surprise it worked. Its not anything anyone told me to do but i didn't have anything to get rid of them or have a car, so every time i saw one i would squirt that sucker until i thought it died lol Then i used my swifer (for the pad, i didn't use the spray with it) and got them off the floor that way. It looks like they were hiding out under the base molding, so i sprayed some down there too and finally got rid of them (for now, FXed!) They havn't been back yet, so hoping it stays that way! Not the most natural thing in the world, so i made sure my toddlers were not in the room, but it did the job.

[klpmommy]

Since fireants are so invasive, once the ant invasion starts in the house i sprinkle ant poison all along the outside perimeter of the house. I don't poison for much, but ants are nearly impossible to get rid of otherwise.

[houseforjoy]

i have a spray bottle of vinegar mixed with cinn and lemon EO and i am spraying it constantly everytime i see the ants, i spray it under the baseboard all over the floor and counters too.

they are still here. i do have to mix the borax poison up still

[FaithHopeLove]

It took awhile for my vinegar to work, but I also had to remove the food source . . .

[Llee]

I had to go to the outside and look for holes they were coming in. One major culprit was the hole they drilled for the cable/internet to come inside. I would go outside and spray all around that hole and the windows. They also (at a previous house) would come in through a non-functioning electrical outlet in the kitchen and only stopped when I used the poison spray all around that and in that. In the bathroom though, they were foiled by cinnamon all around.

[Starfox]

Since fireants are so invasive, once the ant invasion starts in the house i sprinkle ant poison all along the outside perimeter of the house. I don't poison for much, but ants are nearly impossible to get rid of otherwise.

Fire ants get in your HOUSE?!?!?!?! :shiver :shiver :shiver

I seriously did not.know that.

[Saphirah]

I've used cream of wheat before I was Dx'ed. Puffs them up from the inside out. I've put it out in the yard on any hills I see and that's helped a lot.

Sent from my Nexus 4

[Fallin2Grace]

Seems like our method of 3:1 pinsol/water is working, except im not sure if its actually preventing them from coming back or not :shrug3 We had another batch of what i believe to be sugar ants yesterday. I can't figure out where they are coming from...must do some further investigation. But anyways, i used the 3:1 mix and it killed them right away. They havn't been back since. DH sprayed around the house. We live on what used to be an old sand lot, so are highly prone to them. I dont like using chemicals but the kids havn't been outside and they dont play near those areas anyways...i just wish i could find out where they are coming from!

and fire ants are scary...in your house?! woah! now that IS very scary.

[Mamabre]

We also have an ant problem....ugh! DH bought some ant traps/poison and that eliminated the first wave of them but they are back and brought their flying any friends! I'm going to try some of these suggestions!

[WildFlower]

I have been using terro and it works to attract them, kill them but then it seems they come back again and re-swarm the trap. It never completely got rid of them. and every time it rains they come back. I am going to put the trap away tomorrow and vinegar everything and then sprinkle cinnamon and look for the trail outside.

[houseforjoy]

so they are under my kitchen window, and they seem to go in and out of the heating vent on the floor :-/

i am mixing up borax traps tonight to put down.

[houseforjoy]

so i did mix up borax traps and put them in an empty granola bar box right where they were coming in

they stayed in the box, and at that point i considered coexisting with them and just putting food in the box so that they would just stay in the box and not the rest of the house:shifty yes i am an nf why do you ask:giggle

also when i swept them up i was taking them outside and just dumping them in the garbage. but then they made a nest in my garbage can and garage:doh so then i would sweep and dump and flush them in the potty.

the borax mostly worked, but since i found there nest i boiled a BIG pot of water and poured it down there nest, i felt terrible about doing it :bag. but they had started to go outside of the box, and i just was not having it.

also i realized i couldn't just spray the ant trails with my vinegar, i had to spray and WIPE vigorously the floor where their trails were in order to actually erase it.

if you can't get borax i am pretty sure making traps with dish soap and sugar also works.

[Fallin2Grace]

My ants came back a couple of times...and brought their huge spider friends :doh

thinking we are going to have to spray outside at this point...those spiders are everywhere. they are huge and scary. I nearly stepped on two of them last week-barefoot, in my kitchen...im mostly worried about the kids.

[klpmommy]

pic of the spider? Most spiders are scarier than worrisome. Only a few are scary venomous and someo you can handle and aren't likely to bite.