Help Get Rid of Ants

Corn meal. Sprinkle it down, they it eat but can't digest it so they die.

My parents and grandparents always put green walnuts in the window sills, doorframes and any site you see the ants. The ants hate the smell!
Also remove all leaves and debris from your foundation. With all the rain we have had the ants homes are flooded, they are just looking for someplace dry! Those leaves are a natural habitat for them and if that is so close to a home and food...they are even happier!

N.,

I'm sorry to hear about the ants. I had them in my pantry in my old house. I heard of an inexpensive, safe idea to get rid of them. Put a line of Dawn dishsoap along the baseboard (or crack) and the ants will not cross it. It worked for me. I hope it works for you.

B. :-) SAHM to 3 beautiful girls 10, 7.5, and 3.5 years and married to the most wonderful dad and husband I could ask for.

Salt worked for us, just sprinkle all around and the little ants should be gone :-)

I read in Parenting this month that you can sprinkle baking soda in the crack.

You can try cinnamon, but in my experience it only works on the short term. The best thing to do is close that crack! Id put Ant killer around the outside of the house. You can buy it at Home Depot, and surround the house with it. In the backyard where the dogs play you can try to hide it with leaves etc. Also find the Ant hills. pour boiling water into them and it should take care of the problem as well. I tried all of these at home remedies though theonly thing that worked was calling Termenex. They have a product that is safe for kids and dogs and takes care of all household pests. I pay a yearly fee and they come out 4x/year.

Simply you have to stop the food source. Ants are creatures of habit and return to food sources. So the easiest way is to use a 1:1 bleach and water cleaner and start at the crack and work outward. Hope this helps

My sister is the same way with all the natural stuff and what not. She suggested to try corn meal (because they can't digest it and they die).

Hi N.,
I have always had luck w/ ant traps. I had ants in my townhome and put them by the sliding glass door, and they disappeared w/in days.

Good luck.

Have you tried corn meal? I've had pretty good success with that. Supposedly ants can't digest it, and when they take it back to their colony, it kills it off, though it takes a few days. Certainly a cheap and non toxic method, so you might want to give it a try.

K.

I had a problem with them in my dining room and kitchen. Having 2 little guys, I didn't want to blast the Raid, but I did, vaccuumed up the dead ones (some still alive) and washed down the area so my son wouldn't crawl into the insecticide. Then bought 3 boxes of 6 ant baits (little plastic thingys with sweet poison inside) and watched as they seemed to march to their demise. I also put some outside around the house and sprinkled ant bait powder on the perimeter of the house. Within a couple days, no more ants. I think we killed that colony. Good luck.

Baby powder works wonders. It really does. And when you get tired of baby powder, the ant hotels work well,too.

Try boiling water-I hear it works great and it's obviously non toxic.

I know you have a lot of ideas but I was told to try cornmeal...because the ants can't diegest it and they die.

Not a serious response, but a funny story...I was on the phone with a good friend from Ohio. We met years ago when we worked for the same company. She had a food drawer stocked with all kinds of goodies.

She moved back to Ohio and brought her food drawer to her new company, which happened to have offices in a small walk-up style building on the ground floor.

While I was on the phone with her one day, she said, "hey, there's an ant on my desk." Then I heard her say, "oh my gosh, there are ants all over my floor -- and a heck of a lot of cracker crumbs." She didn't realize it at the time, but she wasn't the neatest person when it came to cleaning up crumbs and aparently had "invited" the ants to come hang out under her desk.

Her remedy was to spray them with hair spray...I'm not kidding. This all transpired while we were on the phone and I thought I was going to wet my pants I was laughing so hard. She was giving me up to the second play by play of how each ant was sprayed and slowed down and eventually stopped moving because they were stuck. Then she'd say, "oh! There's another!" and I'd hear a squirt squirt noise.

Again, no advice, just a funny ant story.

I use an Oarange oil spray that you can get from ace or other hardware stores. It is all natural and is safe around children, animals and food. I do find that it works very well; as long as you do make sure there is no food around ants will come from miles away to get it. This is a chalenge since I have a almost 4 year old and almost 2 year old. Good luck.

This is not a 'natural' approach, but try Terro liquid. No smell and you only use a small drop which you can place discreetly in the path or on the crack, and the ants will be gone within a day. Two days ago I had an ant problem near our garbage can; I placed a drop of the Terro behind the can, under a radiator, and woke up the next morning to nothing!

Ant hotels worked great for me! There is no fuss to them at all.

We had horrible ants and I put ant spikes all around the outside of the house and within a couple of days they were all gone.

Hi. Sounds like you tried pepper, but I have found that crushed red pepper works well.

S.
Mom of Jerimiah (6) and Samara (3)

I have used baby powder - it really does work! just sprinkle it wherever they are coming in.

Splenda is a natural ant killer. Makes you think twice before eating it, huh? My MIL tried it and said it is working, takes a bit longer. Good Luck!

We moved into an older home two years ago that had been uninhabited for almost a year. The previous people obviously did nothing to keep the place up. We also have huge trees around the house which adds the bug problem. We put a powdered poison around the foundation on the outside. This helped a lot. You do have watch your pets, but this has not been a problem for us. Last fall we had an addition of mice getting. We acted quickly and put traps from top to bottom, but were concerned about kids getting into them. We found these electronic things that you plug into wall and within 24 hours, we saw no trace of mice. We have kept them plugged in and have noticed a great reduction in bugs also! Our dog shows no effects of these and they are supposed to be nontoxic and cause no problems for kids/dogs. I feel much better not having to spray all the time. We still apply the stuff around the foundation on the outside. Between that and the plug-ins, I have seen 2 ants in the past week. We bought the electronic things (can't remember the name) at Target and they were not expensive. Hope this helps.

I've read that using Raid just makes the ants find another path into your house, it doesn't get rid of them forever. I think ants are very common every spring and fall - - - I have had success using the little ant traps/hotels. The second I see them, I plop down an ant trap, and within a day, they are gone.