I use a mixture of mint jelly (it has to be mint) and Borax (about half and half). I put it into the lids of small jars and set near the entry points. In 24 hours - no more ants!! You do have to repeat every few days.

Well, the first time I ran into this, I moved. Got rid of the problem really quick!

Kidding aside, we got a couple of those ant hotel traps, and put them near entry points. They were gone in a couple of days, and didn't ever come back.

I spray window sills, doorways and other entrances with a mix of water, dishsoap, and orange oil. Also, putting a cup of sugar on the far end of your yard will keep them going there instead of your kitchen for goodies, just keep it dry and full and you should be fine.

Terro liquid ant bait took care of a small ant invasion earlier this Spring near instantly. I bought it based on the reviews on amazon and it apparently did what it was supposed to do (which is to get the ants to carry droplets of the liquid back to their nests to, where the borax dissolves their exoskeleton or some other vital part). Highly recommended.

We had this same problem a couple of summers ago. I actually wrote about it on my blog.

It absolutely worked for us.
http://www.wallcakes.com/blog/2010/4/21/suck-up-the-invaders.html

I've also heard that you can get something that plugs into your outlets that sends out an electronic signal to keep them at bay. You can buy it at the those 'as seen on tv' stores at the mall.

Let us know if it works.
Gina

We had an infestation of Ants when we moved into our new-old house. The were in our bedroom!!!!!!! Let me tell you it felt like they were crawling on me at night...turns out they were carpenter ants and they had made a nest in the hollow core door of my hubby's closet...We got 'em.

A friend of ours is a certified pest-control person so he recommended Borax. Ants HATE boric Acid! I agree with the first post, if not mint jelly even a little honey or jam, something sweet to attract them. Try to find out where they are coming in from too.

I second the Terro recommendation. Ants aren't about a dirty kitchen either, so try not to feel guilty. We had a horrible ant problem right after moving into a house, when the only unpacked food in the kitchen was cat food. We did everything imaginable to get rid of them, but nothing worked until we used Terro.

Also, and oddly, if you just want some sort of quick, satisfying spray that isn't too toxic, try window cleaner. It's ant season again and a couple of times I noticed ants starting to congregate. The first time, I impulsively sprayed them with Windex and not only did they all die, but they didn't re-congregate in the area that had been sprayed. Since then, I've done this twice with similar results. However, at some point we'll probably be overwhelmed and have to dig out the Terro. I haven't yet used it because it's kind of creepy to see how many ants it attracts (although they seem to focus entirely on the Terro) - and that part only lasts for a few days at most, before they are gone, like magic.

That being said, I've heard that different types of ants are attracted to different types of foods, so you might find success with other products.

We have a bad ant problem in my house as well. I called a couple of exterminators but they wanted $250 and wanted to force me to sign up for a contract for them to come back every few months. As annoying as the ants are, it's not annoying enough for me to pay that much to get rid of them. I'm looking forward to seeing the responses here.

We did at least find a solution to keeping ants out of the cat food that we leave out - we bought several of these sani-moats, which attach to your cat food bowls. You fill them up with water, and the ants can't cross over it to get to the water.
http://www.petco.com/product/12626/Sani-Moat-Ant-Barriers.aspx

After the mad crazy rains this month, the ants decided to move into my kitchen, bathroom, living room...

The sprays and poisons seemed so mean and toxic but I was on the verge...when someone suggested I try dryer sheets--like Bounce--and it worked!! The ants won't cross the dryer sheets.

I lined around the doors, around the sink, anywhere I could see them coming in. It took a few days to find their secret pathways but then finally--no more ants!! They moved out!! Don't know where they went and I don't care. Plus the house smells like fresh laundry, a bonus.

As much as I sympathize with the disinclination to call an exterminator, both save money and to avoid pesticides, don't rule it out if these other solutions don't work. Carpenter ants are a big problem for a house, and they're not always hiding out in a place where it's easy to find them. They love water, so anyplace that's damp apparently can become a colony (dripping pipe inside a wall? imperfect flashing under your roof?)....and then they go to work on your beams and joists. If the tips other folks gave don't solve your problem, don't just sigh and live with it... call in the pros. At least they can figure out if it's carpenter ants you're dealing with, and try to locate them before an expensive problem becomes a REALLY expensive problem! Signed, just spent $5K to rip out a deck, the walls of the room below it, the leaky flashing and roof between them....

p.s. Apparently one way of confirming that you have carpenter ants is to check out any stray spiderwebs in your basement. If there are antheads left there, you've got carpenter ants. Their heads and jaws are too tough for Spidey to gobble up, so there they stay... like something from an insect version of Apocalypse Now!

The ants in my house are odorous ants, and apparently they're very common around here (Baltimore area). An easy way to identify them is to squash one and then sniff it - they smell like coconut. They're harmless but annoying.

We have had ants all spring and with a toddler that puts everything he finds in his mouth I was afraid to leave borax or tarro aaround. We put down some food grade Diatomaceous earth along the backside of our house and near the doorway, and a little under the stove where they seemed to be hanging out. The ants are GONE. We might see one or two every now and then and will have to reapply some when it rains.

I have used baking soda and dryer sheets in the past, and both worked perfectly.

I also caulk up the hole they're getting in through if I can find it.

I have cats as well, so no poisons for our house.

Always thought of ants as more suburban/rural. Saw them growing up on L.I. In Manhattan I'm more familiar with roaches, of course, and it never occurred to me that we even had ants in Manhattan . . . until last week, when my neighbor across the hall -- and it's not a very wide hall -- told me he's been having an ant invasion for a while. Yikes! So thanks for starting this thread!

Grant's Ant Stakes. I swear by them. Sorry it ain't PC or Green or Bhuddist. But they work.

http://www.grantsproducts.com/ant_control.html

Just lay 'em down where ever.

how to get rid of pesky pests?....send them to college j/k

Yet another recommendation for Terro. It really is the only thing I've tried that has worked. Just a couple of drops and they're gone in a day or two. I don't know if it will work on carpenter ants though but sure clears the area of the little ones. They sell the pre-filled baits but I've had luck with the liquid dropper and it's lasted for years since you use so little.

I have two dogs and a cat and have read that Terro (mainly a Boric acid-based bait) isn't toxic enough to harm the pets if they eat one. I just try to keep it out of obvious reach but tend not to worry about it.

i've used ground cinnamon or ground black pepper, sprinkled it along the window sill or wherever the ants seem to be coming in and out. it sounds nuts, but it seems to throw the ants off, and then you can vacuum up the pepper or cinnamon!

I had a problem a few months ago with the teeny tiny black ants hanging out on my desk. In my bedroom. Very far away from food of any kind. They must've come from the window, which was closed, but hey, they're tiny. No matter how much I comet'ed, fantastick'ed, etc my desk, they just loved it. I read online that cinnamon is an ant repellant. Well, I put it all over the window sills, the back of my desk, and then I saw one get caught in it- the fine powder sticks to their legs and they can't move. Obviously they figure out to stay away from it. So my desk area and bedroom were ant free within a day or two and they haven't been back. Bonus was my bedroom spelled like apple pie instead of ant spray.

Terro works, but not right away.

I also used cinnamon for a while and black pepper when I realized that it was a cheaper option. Basically, I piled it up all along the doorway where they were coming in. Kept them out of the house long enough for us to determine the outdoor plant pot they were emanating from and get rid of it. After that no more ants.

@ mkw: Yeah, but then they'll still be back in 4 years. ;)

Combat ant gel. Got rid of our ants swiftly and they haven't come back. You use tiny dabs of the stuff and it's great.

Line the area where they are entering with salt or baby powder. Apparently,they won't cross salt or baby powder. Also you can do peppermint near the place where they are coming or crushed peppermint leaves - don't like it either. You can also put peppermint oil in a spray bottle and spray the area. Find the source though and plug it with caulk or something...if you can.

I've lived in a lot of rentals that had ant problems, and the solution is really, really easy. I use peppermint oil. I dab some onto the bottom of doorways or windows (or anywhere I've seen ants) and it repels them completely within 24 hours. I've also had success with using mint tea bags, but they have to be pretty fresh.

I've never needed to try or use anything else- I've had about 3 apartments that had summer ants over the last ten years, and this has worked every single time. I've recommended it to friends with small kids who don't want to leave out poisonous substances, and it's worked for them, too. Give it a try!

Have you children and/or pets? No? Then rent a bungalow somewhere for a weekend and go for the full toxic chemical attack!

No matter what any "green", or "(fill this space)Pro-________________ activist" or avatar's na'vi say... it does help a lot!

Oh, by the way... terro gel does help! But as any good stuff.... In the lonnnnnnnng run... not so much... You can just fool them once or maybe twice (if they are half human!)

Diatomaceous earth. It's organic and kills all bugs.

Cinnamon around perimeters of your home or whatever room they show up in. It's supposed to work really well, and no chemicals. Ants find there way to and from the nest by leaving a scent trail, so anything with a strong odor blocks that mechanism from working. You'll notice other people suggested mint and orange oil. Same principal.

just last night i bought some ant baits that were filled with liquid and placed them in known ant areas; the ants were gone this morning.

i also caulked around the window frames because that seemed to be an entry point for some. a borax barrier has worked well for me in the past

coffee grounds.

talk to them

Growing up, Windex was the go-to for ant killing. But in the event that you have an entire colony in your kitchen, it felt too much like the holocaust. So to save my sense of humanity, I found out that ants will not pass a chalk line and drew around all windows and doors. We figured that the ants don't like the texture of the chalk and can't leave their little pheromones on the dust. So we sprinkled baking soda and/or cinnamon on the floor where they might come invade and BLAM, no ants. Clean up is just a vacuum away.

Just like northdakota103 we used baby powder and it worked wonders! I sprinkled a line where ever I saw the ants and they didn't come back. Good luck!

When I replaced the kitchen cabinets, I doused the bases of the walls and corners liberally with boric acid, then installed the base cabinets. Only a few ants this year. In a few years, I'll pull the covers off the cabinet bases, and re-apply. Boric acid is toxic to children and pets, so keep it in a secure place.

hey wallcakes: if you wrote about it once, can't you just condense it again here instead of trying to drive traffic to your blog?

Everyone's said it, but I'll add mine: go for the Terro.

It's a poison to the ants, but relatively harmless to pets. They put it in corn syrup (the name rhymes with Karo), so it's really attractive to the ants. It doesn't kill them on the spot, they have time to take it back to the nest and it can wipe out the lot of them. Just keep adding it to the cardboard tray until they aren't coming back (sometimes it takes more than one application). My mom always put it on squares of aluminum foil - you'll run out of cardboard "baits" before you run out of the stuff.