apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

2 weeks ago I discovered ants in my place for the first time. Now I cant leave any food out. Even a crumb on the floor is surrounded by ants... I havnt bought anything to get rid of them... i've just been cleaning up after myself and windex-ing them. I know thats inhumane but I freak out and the windex is all I can think of. Thanks for the links!

-Eleazar
http://www.blogazar.com

Orange Guard works very well and is non-toxic.

After 3 consecutive years of unprovoked any invasions by the thousands and trying every remedy I heard about, I finally called an exterminator. So no, it's not "green" but this is the first year I've been ant free and it's a blessing.

When I lived in an apartment in Cal that had a lot of ants at one point, I used Orange Guard. It seemed far less toxic than any of the usual spray things. I can't vouch for it's being *non*toxic, but it seemed pretty harmless (it's made mostly of citrus oil, I think), and it worked.

my bf told me sweet and low or grits works to get rid of ants..

My mom always placed garlic around the perimeter of the house. Don't know if it really work that well or if we were just lucky, but we never had a serious problem with ants.

this is so timely as i too encountered ants this week in my kitchen.
i read that peppermint repels them so i have been dabbing peppermint flavoring, organic no less, all around. haven't seen any since but it's only been a day or 2.
what is Orange Guard?
thanks for the links.

Sprinkling cinnamon around the area where they enter works too

about orange guard: http://www.orangeguard.com/
and where to get it: http://www.orangeguard.com/buy.html

I've been using a spray bottle filled with water and quite a bit of orange, cinnamon, or peppermint oil (essential oil). Shake and squirt on all trails, points of origin and the inside of the trash can. So far, so good.

You can also sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the exterior of your house. Many insects, including ants, avoid it. Gardners also mix it into their planting beds. It's totally natural:
http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com/motherearth-diatomaceous-earth-p-410.html

I heard on the radio (CBC in Canada) that they hate cucumber skins.

Pepper will keep the ants away!

doyourownpestcontrol.com is a helpful website. Delta Dust helped us get rid of a massive ant net in our home.

Uh, I just used to put food outside for them. So they didn't have to make a big trip and they had their own assortment.

Then again, when I moved here, I found a cockroach. One. It lived behind my glade plug in thing, probably because it was warm. And I wanted to make a pet out of it. So I put down some fine home cooking. And it died.

That didn't much help with my opinion of my own cooking.

I got this spray at Cole Hardware that's nothing but peppermint oil (or something like that.) I needed it to be totally non-toxic because of my cat, who likes to sniff around.

well, we have a disgusting centipede invasion here, not to mention ants. and we were desperate...so we went with ortho's home defense MAX, spent the morning spraying every edge of every room, doorways, windows. i WISH it were more natural, but it's safe for the pets when dry, and it says it'll keep the centipedes away. if only there were a fogger for centipedes now for the basement. :(

every spring my place gets invaded by ants. ugh!!!!!! mostly they like to climb up my walls and around the ceiling.

question: i'm just guessing but...do ants follow trails of pheromones left behind by other ants to get around? if so, would applying a fresh coat of paint suffice to erase the trail? i'd wash the wall first...

hopefully someone knows....if not i guess i'll wikipedia it.

if they're sugar ants, use Terro -- I am a firm believer in it!! We've used everything: cinnamon, chalk, vinegar, peppermint, lemon rinds... nothing worked. Terro is basically a mixture of sugar water and boric acid, and the ants feast on the trap, bring some back to the colony, and all dissolve from the inside out from the boric acid. I'm telling you, anyone with a sugar ant problem has to use this stuff.

get to chinatown and buy yourself some miraculous insecticide chalk. draw lines with it, they can't walk over it. it is made of borax, but in easy-to-handle chalk format.

The "miraculous insecticide chalk" is highly toxic and illegal. It is not borax. Don't buy it.

http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~epados/urbanPest/info_chalk.htm

Orange Guard is fantastic, but you have to keep reapplying it.

Use baby powder or any talcum. Sprinkle any where you see them.

My husband had ants for years in his townhome and could never seem to get rid of them - sure, they'd go away for a while after he put out traps, but they'd eventually come back. When I moved in after we got married, I was horrified, having never had an ant problem in my life. It seems like there's not much under our control, as it may very well be a whole building thing and we're just getting overflow from our neighbors.

Here's what I have found that works: when we seem to have a lot of them, we lay out the traps. We've switched back and forth between Raid and Terro because they have different main ingredients and it seemed like they were perhaps getting immune to one or the other.

After we've killed the majority of them, the trick to keeping them away seems to be keeping a very clean kitchen. No dishes in the sink. Always wiping down the countertops after cooking, or during cooking, with a spray cleaner (we use Charlie's), and once a week making sure to wipe things down that usually get missed in daily cleaning (like behind the KitchenAid stand mixer or under the toaster oven). Also, we moved any food products to upper cabinets or the pantry where they can't get to, and use the lower cabinets only for non-food items.

I haven't had to kill an ant for several months, so it seems to be working for us.

If you can't get rid of them somehow, just leave them be. The benefit of having ants inside your house is that you won't have termites instead. Ants and termites are natural enemies, so if you have ants crawling around the house, it is safe to say that your house is termite-free.

I used to have termites consuming the edges of some cheap MDF bookshelf, but ever since I've spotted some black ants around the house, the termites seemed to disappear. Besides, these black ants are harmless, they don't bite. It's also an indication that your house is a naturally safe place to stay, like no odorless gas leak or something. I liken this to buying vegetables. I'd always look out for the ones with some consumption mark by some bug because it's a clear indication that pesticides were not used. In other words, if it's safe for them, it's safe for you.

We had a terrible ant problem a few months ago and we made a recipe of sugar(or honey), water, and borax in a bowl and left it on the counter for a few days. The ants are attracted to the sugar water and the borax kills them. Within a few days, the bowls were full of dead ants (we changed the solution every day, too!) and we haven't seen any since then.

what about silverfish? Every night the past week I've seen one crawling on the ceiling near our skylight. And we've had giant ones (well, they looked like giant silverfish anyway) up there too. One even fell on the bed while I was in it. That was awesome. If they're coming in from the roof, how do I stop them?

That is one gorgeous ant photo, by the way.

We had an ant problem when the spring rains started at our old house, and we found cayenne pepper to be an awesome repellent. I made a paste of it with a little water, then spread it along the edges of the kitchen where they seemed to be coming in. It doesn't kill them, but they definitely don't like it! Windexing them also worked when I was feeling mean.

Silverfish are in the walls - again, not a green solution, but call an exterminator. They will have you remove all of your light switch covers and socket covers and shoot a powder in there that cuts them when they walk through it. They eat paper so if you've got a lot of books, then that's a veritable shmorgasbord for them.

vinegar will get rid of their scent trails around your house, I found this very helpful last year when they marched straight into my kitchen from the bathroom window. . .I used vinegar to mop the floor/counters and after that they became disorientated, and it took them longer to find my kitchen again, (and by that time I had cleaned up, and put away everything they might be interested in) I left a few bottles of beer around,with about an inch of beer left in the bottom and they climb in to drink, and end up falling in and getting stuck--probably got about 20 or so ants per bottle I left out, per day. . after a week they were gone.

Orange Guard does the trick everytime. It works not only on ants but also with all the other usual little pests. It is non-toxic and totally OK around kids and pets.

oh god, now I have to figure out how to get rid of the highly toxic not very miraculous insecticide chalk. arrrrrghhh.

thank you ellebee

Spread crushed bay leaves around. It does a miraculous job.

Terro! Terro! Terro!

Indoor & Outdoor traps... REALLY WORKS.
it's amazing. I'll never use anything else again

little flower: Once one has found some food it lays a trail for others to follow, but that trail isn't permanent, it will dissipate after afew hours. If you have continuous problems with ants in different parts of your home their nest is probably very close to an entrance to your home and they just happen to keep finding treats in your house. If you're just getting one at a time they're scouting for food, and again their nest is probably very close to your home.

I'm with Selena. Terro is the best thing for sugar ants (the really small ones) It's bromine or borax mixed into a sticky liquid. You put out a drop or two on a cardboard swatch. They swarm it, they leave, they don't come back.

Diatomaceous earth is good for most small insects and makes a very good flea treatment for your home. Sweep it over your carpet so it gets down into the base. Adult Fleas, Larvae or Eggs that come in contact with it get the moisture sucked out of their body as if they were freeze dried. For anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's the tiny fossilized skeletons of microscopic sea creatures. Totally nontoxic. You can find it at garden and pool supply stores.

thanks for the tips Piri!
:-D