Holy crap help with ants!

dragossoul84

I need some serious help with ants I dont know why this is happening I clean my kitchen twice a day there is no food on my counters or floor but every morning I get up there are ants all over my kitchen I know where their coming from (my deck slider off the kitchen) but have had zero luck stopping their assault. My son is crawling and into everything so I use plant based cleaners is there something natural I can use to deter the ants that wont hurt my son?

SidraJedi

Diatomaceous earth is supposed to help. We're trying it on our ants and it helps. I am seeing results but we are not using it as aggressively as we could because I don't have the time since my husband has been sick and I am doing EVERYTHING. There is likely something natural out there that works faster.

Dobie_Mama

We use DE for about everything but it doesn't handle our ants. We use Terro ant bait traps. It's basically Borax and sugar gel. You could easily make your own.

Moosesoar

Ants don't like clove. I put essential oil and water in a spray bottle and spray around door ways and such. My grandma lays cloves, that you cook with, along the backs of counter tops.

SidraJedi

Dobie_Mama:

We use DE for about everything but it doesn't handle our ants. We use Terro ant bait traps. It's basically Borax and sugar gel. You could easily make your own.

I'm gonna try this!

SurpriseAt39

https://m.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Ants-Naturally

You could try one or more of these.  

gator1215

Last time I had ants in the kitchen they seemed to multiply daily despite trying tons of different things. Finally read on Pinterest to soak a cotton ball in a mixture of sugar water and borax and leave them sitting in various places around the kitchen. Initially it created a feeding frenzy but within two days there were no more ants at all. This will be my new go to if they return in the future! 

MrsAB1316

Cinnamon is a great ant deterrent. However, if you really want them to go away, you gotta kill the queen, so you'll need to put out something the ants will take back to her. The Tero is good for that.

trudibell

Our kitchen had an ant problem because even though it was clean the shelf liners were dirty and had lots of sugar/spice/honey stuck underneath that we hadn't realized.  We cleaned that out and used a mixture of Trader Joe's dish soap and vinegar and let it dry for a few days before replacing everything.  A couple "scout" ants remained for the rest of the week, but they quickly lost interest.  Good luck!

SplashingFishy

Not sure if this would work in your case, but it may help others. In our old house, we had a small hole in the hardwood floor, and the ants were coming in through that (below the floor was the basement). If you get some steel wool from the hardware store and stuff it in holes or crevices, it will also deter them as well as other bugs.

Kidcrazy4

Definitely second the borax and sugar idea! We set out Dixie cups of borax sugar and water to make it sticky, around the baseboards of the dining room. They were gone within a few days, finding 20 or 30 a day dead in each cup. Also we lined out house outside with sprinkled borax they seemed to come from the garden area which is up against our dining room wall. The funny thing is we never had any in our kitchen or pantry