Ants are usually not dangerous, but they can be frustrating. Their mere presence can smear your house’s clean image. If they find their way into your furniture, they can ruin your relaxing living room and bedroom. It’s even worse when ants find their way into your kitchen. They have no boundaries and will happily entangle themselves in your sugar, honey and other foods.
The sheer magnitude of an ant infestation can also be overwhelming. Even if you squash a few, more will take their place. Fortunately, there are several ways to get rid of ants for good.
Common Ant Species in the Boston Area
There are over 10,000 ant species around the world. Within the Boston area, however, you will find the following three species are the most common:
Carpenter Ants
These ants burrow into wood. Sometimes they are mistaken for termites, but carpenter ants don’t eat the wood. The damage that they do can cause property values to decrease.
Pavement Ants
These are tiny ants, measuring at approximately 1/16th of an inch. They like to build mounds within cracks and crevices of pavements and driveways. You can also find them building nests behind in secluded areas like baseboards. Other areas include the basement, bathtub, toilet, and garage.
Odorous House Ants
These ants are the same size as pavement ants. They prefer areas with high moisture, like kitchens, bathrooms, and near drains. They also like to build their nests under lower cabinets, which are dark and safe. They get their name from the odor they emit when they are crushed.
Keep Your Home Tidy
To an ant, your house is an entire world that offers lots of shelter and food. If you want to keep ants out, you will need to make your home as inhospitable to them as you can. There are some simple housekeeping tips you can use to achieve this, such as:
- Reduce the number of plants and amount of mulch near your house. Plants act as bridges that ants can use to get to your house, and they often hide in and around mulch for shelter. Surrounding your foundation with a one-to-two-foot-wide strip of concrete or asphalt can help protect your home.
- Trash and litter are food sources for ants, so ensure that you keep trash under a tight lid. Regularly clean the trash area to rid it of anything that may have spilled or fallen over.
- Clean all areas of your house regularly. Not only will you get rid of food sources for ants, but you will also disrupt their nesting.
Patch Any Cracks
Cracks, crevices, and gaps offer ants entry points into your home, as they are small enough to get through any opening they can find. That includes cracks in the foundation, gaps around door and window seals, holes in window screens, loose siding, missing roof shingles, and gaps around things like utility lines, pipes, electric wiring, and cable wiring.
Do a once-over of all these areas to check for weaknesses and repair them right away. Aim to make your repairs before the weather gets warm, as summer is a big time for ants.
Try Some All-Natural Remedies
Using chemicals to get rid of ants may make you anxious if you have children and pets in your home or if you want to live a green lifestyle. Fortunately, there are natural remedies you can use to repel ants.
Peppermint is a natural ant repellent, so you can put a few drops of peppermint oil on a cotton ball and place it near their nest to drive them out. You can also mix peppermint oil with water and put it into a spray bottle that you can spray around problem areas.
Ants also have an aversion to cucumbers. Place a few slices where they like to gather, and they will act as a repellent.
Ants rely on scent trails to get around, which you disrupt by drawing a line through them with chalk. If you encircle your home with a chalk circle, you may ward off ants for a time. A chalk line is only a temporary measure, though, because they can power through it.
Contact a Professional
Perhaps the most important step you can take is to call in a professional before the situation gets out of control. The main advantage of DIY is that you get a cheap solution, but a professional service can likely save you money in the long run by ending the issue once and for all.
If you don’t correctly examine open pipes, behind boards, or other necessary areas, you may end up causing damage to your property. Some DIY solutions are costly and, if they don’t work, then it’s money down the drain. If your DIY makes things worse, it will simply add to the cost of professional services down the line when things are more severe. You can save yourself the stress of handling situations yourself by contacting an ant exterminator in Boston, MA.
Make Your Home Ant-Free Ants are determined, organized little critters, so brushing them away will not work. Instead, you need to keep a clean, sealed house that doesn’t allow them to enter or set up a nest. You can use natural remedies for minor situations, but you should call the professionals before things get out of hand.
