The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah. Or more like BOO-NO! And they never, EVER march in just groups of 1, or 2, or 3. More like entire COLONIES that always seem to make their way into your house on the 2nd week you haven’t vacuumed and there’s a proverbial smorgasbord of delicious goodies all over the floor for them to avail themselves of….
We always seem to get a general infestation of ants as soon as we get a few consistent days of warmth and sunshine. And with kids around it can be very difficult to safely eliminate the problem. Ant poison traps are always in danger of ending up in little hands, spraying is just nasty (not to mention super toxic!) and I’ve never found a safe “natural” solution that works well.
I’d often do a happy dance on the rain days when the torrents would come down, thinking with glee that the ants were getting drowned and washed away. Not so, as we learned in our Apologia studies last year. Ants have the ability to hold their breath. For a long time. Which means no ants were getting drowned on our back patio. (Great defense mechanism, bad elimination tactic).
So in desperation, I devised my own completely safe, highly effective (and let’s face it, fun :D) way to get rid of ants.
All you need is some water, a kettle, broom, vacuum and mop, and a pile of ants.
Step 1. Sweep or vacuum the area where your ants are coming in. Wipe the floor down or mop to remove as much of their scent as possible.
Step 2. Boil your kettle full of water.
Step 3. Pour boiling water over the ants and ant hills.
Step 4. Repeat
Bonus feature – This is also a really great way to get a clean patio or a big mud puddle for your kids to play in too :D
I’m DEAD serious (hee hee). This works. And it works well! You may have to repeat a couple of times, and reboil the kettle depending on how many ant hills you have in the back yard. But once we do this a couple times (and keep floors swept clean and mopped!) you’ll stop seeing the ants coming in.
We do this a couple of times (maybe) over the summer and that’s all the ants we have to deal with!
Let me know if you try it how it works for you!
