With warmer weather the ants have come. This new place we have been renting since September seems to be wide open to them. They come in through the back porch door and right into the kitchen. They love all the food my little ones drop on the floor and they love the garbage can. Bringing pesticides into the home is not going to happen so when the ants start to arrive I have to find natural ways to get rid of them. I played this game for a bit at the tail end of summer last year and they kicked my butt… they and their friends the fruit flies. This year I am determined to kick them back to the curb.
Last year I mostly used a homemade Borax and maple syrup trap and that didn’t work very well. Vinegar worked for a short time and then they would be back. I wash my entire kitchen floor weekly with vinegar and they still came calling. This year I will try other methods and maybe change up my old methods a bit.
Natural Ant Deterrents
- Borax mixed with jelly/jam
- Vinegar infused with tea tree oil (will disinfect the kitchen as well)
- Cloves put near the entrance where they are coming in
- Sprinkle cayenne pepper, cinnamon, or black pepper at the entrance and along their typical “route”
- Cotton balls sprinkled with a minty essential oil or a citrus oil
- Baby powder/ chalk line at entrance
- Cucumber or Citrus peels near entrance
One thing that really seemed to work last week was spraying them with the Trader Joe’s Next To Godliness Multi-Purpose Cleaner. I bought the bottle awhile back and don’t use it much because I hate the smell. It is supposed to have Cedarwood and Clary Sage oils but it smells artifical to me. Anyway the ants don’t like it either. It killed the ones I sprayed and then they haven’t been back… but I need to clean the kitchen floor badly now so I imagine once it is washed away they might come back. It is still nice to have a fast, easy recourse though that is pretty natural.
How have you deterred ants from the home?
I lay a line of chili powder across wherever they have been entering. The ants won’t cross it.
cayenne pepper works for us. also deters mice! Peppermint oil is good as well.
I always take ants and other problems as a sign that I need to fix something. Ants only show up in our house if there are crumbs, the floor isn’t mopped, dishes are left unwashed, etc. so I take them as life’s impetus to step up my cleaning. :) Sounds a little goofy, but it works here.
We also used the outside ants for all sorts of homeschool experiments, comparing supposed deterrents and doing projects (harmless to the ants). My daughter even got them to run a chalk maze! LOL The video and our projects are here: http://www.examiner.com/homeschooling-in-mankato/ant-science
I’ve heard that castile soap with peppermint oil in it works….I’m going to try it and will let you know. Good article, thanks!
I’ve heard that castile soap with peppermint oil in it works….I’m going to try it and will let you know. Good article, thanks!
We put diatomaceous earth down, which is safe for humans and pets, but kill the ants within a couple days. Then we go outside and look for the main ‘nest’ and pour boiling water over it. Works really well!
We just had the exterminator out to our house last week. I was sad at first, but our ants were so bad and all of these natural treatments didn’t work. I put down cinnamon, they’d go around and come out somewhere else. The kitchen would be immaculate, they’d still be cruising around. I put out borax, they’d walk right around it. I talked all of this over with the exterminator (who actually is a little on the green side) and he gave me some good insight. He put down a mixture of corn husks and boric acid. I asked him if it was borax, and he said it was similar. After explaining my borax fail, he explained that the borax ratio has to be extremely small (the mix he was using was .05 boric acid) because otherwise the ants can sense it and won’t go near it. He also went around out house and explained why we were getting ants in the first place. Basically, ants like moisture and if you have a lot of it (grading, severe tree cover, exposed wood) they are going to come calling. Hopefully after fixing all of these things, they will not want to come back next year!
I’m going to give peppermint a try this year-Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castille Soap. I’ve heard that works well. Thanks for all the great tips. I have also tried Cinnamon and that seemed to work-although it was a bit messy.
We’re having our best luck so far with a mixture of Peppermint Oil and Purification Oil from Young Living. Has anyone else tried the line of chalk?
What about getting chickens?! Do they eat ants? They might take care of them outside so they never make it inside.
not enough to get rid of the ants, though chickens are still great for lots of reasons.
Instant grits. They eat them and later explode when the grits expand. VERY effective!
I use the borax trick sometimes. Works great.
i just use straight baking soda. i dump it where ever they come in at and then where they gather at in my house. i tried cinnamon too, but it didn’t work. does anyone know how to get rid of fire ants and their mounds naturally?
http://www.unperfectnesss.blogspot.com
Did you know you can buy fox urine to deter cats from getting in your yard, it actually works.
Perfect timing for this. I’ve has success with pepper. I’ll h ave to try some of the others listed.
Oh my goodness, I seriously need this, there’s like an ant explosion on various parts of our rooms, that it’s driving me crazy. I think we have cayenne lying around, I’ll probably try that today. Thanks for this post!
Thanks for the tips! I have tried some of them with little success. But what has worked for me is to change their course. I put a piece of watermelon right outside where the ants are coming in. And then, once the ants discover it, I gradually move it farther away from the house. It works wonders!
I posted what I did here:
http://www.eco-novice.com/2011/01/ants.html
Not the very greenest, but I was getting desperate.
I took some borax and mixed in some water in a little jar. I added a bunch of sugar, about the same amount the borax. I put some ripped paper towels in there to soak up the mixture a bit and set it out where the ants were the worst. Ants come out like crazy for about two or three days and then…they disappear.
I have heard Clove Oil is supposed to be effective. I currently am battling ants in my bathroom thanks to one of my natural sugar scrubs. *grrr*
diatomaceous earth can work. You need to find out where they are coming in from. I finally noticed there was a steady stream of ants walking up and down a tree over to the house, crawling up the foundation and under the shingles. Carefully (with no wind and pick a time where it won’t rain for several days) sprinkled a circle of DE around the tree. The next day there was minimal activity. There are 2 kinds of DE. You need the kind that is NOT used in swimming pools. This took a while to accomplish, but it was real cool to actually witness (after many walks around the outside of the house) where they were coming into the house.
I’ve used sweet and low. I get some packets from work and put some outside where they have their homes. I have just started getting small ones inside- we normally find a random large one because our back screen door has a gap between the floor and the door, allowing them to just walk in. Cinnamon and chalk do not work. I put a large line of cinnamon near the door where they were coming in and I’ve actually seen them cross right over it. I’m going to try the vinegar though. I have tons of that.
What about carpenter ants?
Last year, we used the Borax and sugar soaked on paper towels and stopped up the holes. It sort of worked – it took a few weeks though and the paper towels turned to cement. This year, they have not come back so I can only assume the queen died – either from the Borax or something drowned her. Wish I had a better answer!