Operation Ant Day 1 and 2

I love spring! But I hate the ants that come with it. They like to come in through our kitchen window and scout things out. Wednesday, I noticed several ants in the morning so I started doing my research on how to get rid of them using non-toxic methods. Here's what I tried:

First off, a quick kill method that doesn't involve squishing and crunching - fill a squirt bottle with water and add some dish soap. This works fabulously, killing the ant in a matter of seconds, and it also helps with the kitchen cleaning!

Once I killed what I could see, I worked on keeping them out of the kitchen:

I placed bay leaves along the window sill. I guess this did not work as soon after I saw an ant crawling on one of the leaves.

In a last desperate attempt, I sprinkled both cinnamon and pepper in the window. This seems to have actually helped, I have only seen one ant inside since I did this and it came through at the top of the window, avoiding the cinnamon and pepper. Not sure which one of the two is doing the repelling (or maybe both).

Scott gave me a few days to try a natural method of killing all the outdoor ants before he buys some ant killer and sprays it out there. So I mixed 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup honey in a glass jar and microwaved to melt the sugar. Then I added 1/4 cup borax. I spread some of this on the window outside and threw little balls of it in the weeds along the house and in the wood piles along the field. At any given time yesterday and today there are a few ants outside the window eating the stuff, so I have hope.


Maybe we will inspect the yard and try to place some near any ant hills we find out there. I also read that you can buy the miracle grow spray and mix borax into that and spray around the yard. This is also supposed to kill fleas.

Maybe this will help anyone else dealing with ants! I will let you know if our methods have worked.


*An FYI - Borax is not non-toxic (but is considered low toxicity). I don't think ingesting a little bit will hurt the dogs or wildlife that might lick it up but I did put most of it up out of reach of the dogs at least. And what is on the ground is in very small amounts so hopefully the worst I could do is give a mouse a tummy ache.