This is kind of embarrassing, but I need to get it off my chest. We have ants. Lots of ants. Millions of ants. They moved in the first week of February. I have no idea where they came from and they will not go away. I have been trying to find natural ways to get rid of them even though my first instinct is to buy the strongest bug killer that I can find and spray my entire house.
They are literally everywhere. Downstairs, upstairs, in my sock drawer. Yesterday Jackson said, “Mama! I have ants in my pants!” Sure enough, there was an ant crawling on his jeans.
I tried sprinkling cinnamon, but other than covering my house in brown dust and smelling good, it really didn’t do much. I found out later that although ants don’t like cinnamon, they get used to it. I have heard of mixing Borax with sugar, but I don’t have any Borax and I keep forgetting to write it on my shopping list. I keep a spray bottle of vinegar and water on my kitchen counter so I have been misting my house with that because it’s supposed to confuse their sense of smell. I scrubbed the walls in the stairwell with vinegar water yesterday because that seems to be a popular spot. All that did was make them run around the house like crazy. I put some cornmeal and baby powder out because that’s supposed to kill them, but they must have been so confused by the vinegar that they couldn’t find it. I vacuumed it up after about an hour because I couldn’t stand the thought of the boys playing in it.
The ants are probably coming upstairs from the basement because that’s where I first noticed them. We have a walkout basement, but the snow is still so high in the backyard that the only logical reason for them to appear in February is that they must be living in our walls!!!! Or, they’re from North Dakota and heard that we live on top of a hill.
The advice that I have found online usually starts out by saying that my house is probably dirty. Duh. I have two little kids. My house is covered in crumbs. That made me wonder why, other than the giant black ant that bit me when I was 9, we never had ants in our house when I was little. Keep in mind that there were 6 kids in our family. Even when we lived in Arizona and had fire ants in our yard (okay, they bit me too), they never dared to enter the house. That was probably due to my mom standing at the door vacuuming up any ant (or gecko) that tried to get in. We also swept the floor after every meal. My floors are lucky if they get swept every two weeks. Have I ever mentioned that I was the messy one in our family? My sisters shared a room with a white bedspread and spotless floors. I had patchwork quilts on my bed, clothes all over my floor and cobwebs on the ceiling. My mom used to tell me, “You’ll probably care more about having a clean house when you have your own home”. Looks like that never happened.
So, here’s what I’ve done so far:
I put ant traps in the kitchen, in the basement bathroom, and one inside the closet by the door leading to our backyard.
I washed the walls on the stairwell and vacuumed the basement.
I misted pretty much every surface in my house with vinegar and water and let it air dry. It smells like I’m making pickles now.
I’m also going to scrub everything with Pine-Sol because that is supposed to drive them away too.
This had better work because these ants are really making me mad. They’re making me mad that I have been living in a state of denial about how dirty my house really is. Time to start cleaning! I’ll let you know if it works or not.
When did we share a room with a white bedspread? Don’t you remember how “clean” I was in the Emily house? I distinctly remember wading through lots of junk all over my floor and when mom told me to clean it up I put it all in my closet and cube. One time she helped me clean my room and we cleaned out my cube and there was old dirty underwear in there from the last time I “cleaned”. HAHAH!! Poor Mom, I don’t know how she did it.
You and Tina had a white down comforter when we lived in the Selvig house. Somehow, you two never had a single thing out of place! I remember being so jealous that I wasn’t motivated enough to be as clean as the two of you.
Although…I think I remember that dirty underwear episode too…
O ya, I forgot about that. But thats probably because I was gone most of the time at school…
Ok, my commenting on this post is just getting out of control but – first off I meant to say my room was clean because I was gone at school, not that I forgot about that bedroom because I was gone at school.
Now that I’ve cleared THAT up!
Um, Nic killed an ant in our house today which means somehow they are migrating across town from my house to your house. AACK!!
Also I really like those potato/carrot pancakes but didn’t have a recipe for them. I probably should have said that on the actual pancake post but since I’m am being so excessive right now, Why stop?!!