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Cleaning Tips To Prevent Ants In Your Home
Tips To Prevent Ants
There are a lot of annoying insects who can infest your home. While ants aren’t the worst pests out there, they can still be a source of alarm. This is especially true if you’ve had a bad experience with ants. You might also be wary of them if you have a severe allergic reaction to ant stings.
Keeping ants out of your home isn’t as easy as it sounds. These tiny creatures are able to squeeze through the tiniest of holes. They also leave scent-trails leading to your home. Meaning once a single ant finds its way into your home, the rest will soon follow. So how can you stop this from happening? Just follow some of the tips and recommendations mentioned below, and your home will be ant-proof in no time.
Proper Food Storage
Ants usually enter your house when they’re searching for food. If they find it, the ants will carry the food back to their nest while leaving a trail for other ants to follow. That means the problem will only get worse if you don’t put an immediate stop to it.
The best way to do that is to prevent these insects from finding your food in the first place. You should start by properly sealing off any food around your home. Don’t let the food sit out in the open air. Instead, wrap it inside its packaging. If you’ve cooked something yourself or the food doesn’t come in suitable packaging, you should consider using air-tight containers.
Cleaning Up
While properly storing food will get you far, it still isn’t enough to solve the problem. That’s because your home is still littered with food, even if it’s too small to be seen. A few crumbs here and there might not seem like a lot to you, but these can go a long way towards feeding a colony of ants.
That’s why it’s important that you frequently clean your home. You should never leave any food scraps or crumbs lying around. It’s recommended that you always wipe surfaces after eating on them. This helps keep ants out and makes your home look all the better.
It’s a good idea to habitually clean your home a few times a week. A bit of vacuuming and mopping goes a long way to keeping pests out of your home. By cleaning up with bleach or other cleaning agents, you’re also removing any of those scent-trails that might lead to your food. This makes ants lose their trail, so they’re more likely to give up and leave your home for good.
Washing Dishes
While it’s important to properly remove ants by calling a professional, you can sometimes get by on your own. You’ll be able to remove ants with nothing but your wits, some hard work, and a few tools here and there.
Sealing Off Your Home
Keeping with the theme of cleaning and sanitization, it’s a good idea for you to wash any dishes immediately after using them. No one likes washing dishes, but it’s one of the best ways of keeping your home clean and pest-free.
But wait, what does washing dishes have to do with ants? Well, it turns out that ants can actually swim. That means that leaving dishes in the sink isn’t much better than leaving scraps of food lying around. If they happen to be nearby, they’ll get the scraps of food from your sink before departing to tell their friends. Before you know it, your kitchen will be swarming with ants.
Sealing Off Entries
Once you’ve done all the necessary cleaning, there are going to be fewer ants in your home. Yet there are still going to be plenty of tiny gaps in the building, so ants could still wind up in your home by accident.
The best way to keep ants out for good is to block off all their little pathways. This can be pretty tricky because of how small these entries can be. That’s why your best bet is to do a thorough examination of your home. You can then work on sealing off any small holes you find.
Sometimes you won’t be able to find any obvious entries, and that’s okay. If you can’t find them, you’ll just have to wait until you see ants coming into your home. Then you can watch their movements to see how they’re getting in, before sealing that entry off as well.
Using Repellents
There’s still plenty you can do after sealing off the entries, and using repellents is one of them. Repellents come in all shapes and sizes. Some are factory-made. While others can be made at home. Salt is one of the easiest repellents to use. It’s cheap and everyone already has some lying around their home. Spreading some around the perimeter of your home can do some damage to any wandering ants. The salt will drain the moisture from their bodies as they walk over it, forcing them to go home or die of dehydration. There are plenty of powders and insecticides which can accomplish the same thing, like diatomaceous earth.
It’s been said that spreading talcum powder around your home will also keep ants out, but the phenomenon isn’t understood properly. You can also repel ants by overloading their senses. This can be done by using strong- smelling substances, like vinegar and peppermint oil. You can also irritate them by using something spicy, like cayenne pepper.
Removing Ant Colonies
The best way to prevent an ant infestation is to get rid of them before they have a chance of getting into your home. This can be pretty extreme, as the ants aren’t really that harmful. Yet in some cases, that’s the only choice you have.
If you want to remove an ant colony, you could try pouring some boiling water down their anthill. This should kill the ant queen, who’ll usually be at the bottom of the anthill. Without the queen to support the colony, the other ants will eventually die off or leave on their own.
Professional Help
If ants are bothering you, it’s recommended you call a professional to sort things out. They can advise you on how to best take care of the problem, and they can even remove the colony if needed!
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