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Ants In House – What To Do If I Find Ants In My House?
What to do if I find ants in my house
Seeing a group of ants wandering into your home can be pretty worrying, especially if you’re allergic to their bites and stings. Not only can the ants sting you, but they can get into your pantry and contaminate all your food. Some species of ants even build their nests in wooden structures, so they can do a lot of damage to your home.
For all of those reasons and more, you’re going to want to get rid of the ants as soon as they appear. Follow a few simple steps, and your home will be ant-free in no time.
Remove the Food Source
Ants usually show up inside your home when they’ve found an easily accessible source of food. That’s why your first task is to remove anything the ants might consider food.
You’ll have to seal all your food inside an airtight container to prevent ants from getting into them. You should also hide all your fruit by placing it inside your fridge.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to be enough. Even though you cleaned up all visible sources of food, there might still be crumbs lying all over the place.
You should remove these by wiping off crumb-filled surfaces, and then vacuuming your home. This gets rid of all the tiny crumbs, and it’ll eventually force the ants to leave your home.
That’s not all, however, as ants can still get into your garbage, sink, or pet’s food. That’s why you should consistently throw out the trash when it fills up. You should also wash your dishes the moment you’re done using them. If you don’t, ants might try to get some of the food while the dishes pile up in the sink. Finally, you should keep your pet food inside and clean the bowls regularly. Once you’ve done all of that, you’re on your way to an ant-free home.
Erase Their Trail
The next step is to remove any ant trails in your home.
Whenever ants find food, they’ll carry it back home while leaving a scent-trail that lets other ants know where to find food. Once a single ant gets into your home, the others will soon start following its steps.
Even if you remove all the food in your home, the scent will last for quite some time. Ants will keep showing up, though they’ll often return home empty-handed.
To prevent these ants from showing up, you should clean the surfaces ants walk on. Make sure to use a strong cleaning agent, bleach, or something like vinegar. These will either erase the smell or cover it up, so the ants will lose their path and won’t bother entering your home.
Seal Up Their Entries
Once you’ve removed all the food sources and have wiped away their trails, you’re going to want to seal them out for good. This can be pretty difficult, considering the fact that these tiny creatures can get into your home through the tiniest of holes.
To get started, you should carefully watch the ants who are making their way into your home. Make sure to keep track of all the little nooks and crannies they’re coming out of. This will inform you of all the entries used by the ants. Then once you’ve figured out all the entries, you should start going around and sealing them up with whatever material you want. Just make sure that they’re airtight, so these tiny creatures can’t get inside anymore.
It’s also a good idea to line the outsides of these places with insecticide or some repellent that’ll keep the ants out for good. Salt, talcum powder, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, and diatomaceous earth will be good bets.
Destroy Their Colony
If you really want the ants gone for good, you can choose to get rid of their entire colony. This can be an extreme reaction, especially since ants don’t usually intend to hurt or harm you. Yet in some extreme cases, this might be your only way to get rid of them.
You start by finding their colony. Odds are that they have an anthill near your home. Then once you’ve found it, you can pour boiling hot water down the central hole. The water will be hot enough to kill the ants quickly, and the amount of water might even cause some structural damage that will bring their entire anthill crashing down around them.
Call a Professional
Regardless of the number of ants, the species, or their stubbornness, a professional will always be your best bet for removing ants from your home. These people have years of experience removing ants from people’s homes, and they’ll have all the gear needed to make short work of the ants who are bothering you.
That’s why you should consider calling a professional because it’ll be easier and more effective than removing the ants yourself.
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