How to Get Rid of Ants (Without Calling an Exterminator)
Published on - April 10th, 2008 (Modified on - September 21st, 2009) (by J.D. Roth) I hate ants.
At our old house, Kris and I were constantly at war with the little devils. Every time we suffered another invasion, every time they managed to find the pantry, every time they discovered the cat food, every time they ruined my chocolate chip cookies, I would berate them with colorful euphemisms.
Eventually it got so bad that we had to bring in an exterminator. It seemed crazy to hire an exterminator to deal with little sugar ants, but nothing else we tried would work. So we plopped down $100 every three months to keep the ants under control. (It may not have been $100 for each visit — Kris thinks it could have been $300.) It didn’t really help. After the exterminator visited, the ant problem would subside for a couple weeks, but then we’d be right back at war with them again.
Sad but true: the ants were one of the reasons I wanted to move out of that house.
I hate ants.
We’ve been lucky at our new house. In the almost four years that we’ve lived here, we haven’t had an ant problem.
Then on Tuesday night Kris asked, “Why is there an ant highway at the bottom of the stairs?” In our secret couple-language, an “ant highway” is the long teeming swarm of ants running from their point of origin to whatever it is they’ve decided they’re hungry for. Kris followed the ants to their destination; I traced them to their source. They were traveling through four rooms to find their treasure: a sticky mess I had made on the kitchen floor. There were hundreds (thousands?) of ants feasting on hunk of goo.
I berated the little bastards with colorful euphemisms.
But I didn’t call the exterminator. Kris and I are older and wiser now. We’ve learned that we don’t have to pay $100 to get rid of the ants. Instead, we use about one dollar’s worth of a single product: Terro. I hate ants, but I love Terro.
Terro is essentially borax mixed with sugar water. You can buy a small bottle for about five bucks at your local hardware store or supermarket. 
When your home is invaded by ants, you take a business card and sprinkle it with drops of Terro. You place the business card near whatever it is the ants are devouring, and then you wait. It may take a day. It may take two. And during that time, the ants will swarm all over the area (keep adding more Terro!), but gradually they’ll carry this sticky sweet poison back to their nest, and the entire colony will perish like some freakish doomsday cult. It’s delightful.
Is it possible to spend even less to get rid of ants? The Frugal Life has a large list of tips for getting rid of ants. Kris and I have tried most of these. They didn’t work for us. Some of them (like cinnamon or cayenne pepper or soap) deterred the ants for a while, or thwarted their immediate goal, but they didn’t actually address the root problem, which is the fact that we had a nest (or two) of ants outside our house. Terro does this. And for whatever reason, we’ve never had luck spraying the little critters with Raid (or other chemicals). (Though doing so is very cathartic.)
Yes, this post reads like a product endorsement. I don’t care. Nobody paid me to write this. I’m just grateful for a product that can save me so much money. And kill the damn bastards that invade my home.
Flickr photo by sbfisher.
Addendum: I have the best readers in the world. Your comments are great. And, via Michael, here’s a short story called “Leinegen Versus the Ants”. Those of us who have been there can sympathize!
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It seems to me that the Terro product is a bit of a rip off when you can buy a box of borax in the laundry section of your grocery store, mix it with icing sugar, and put it out for the ants. We had a very bad ant problem when we used to rent an older house and this took care of it for good.
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My wife moved out of our last house for a few different reasons, but one of the main reasons for her was our recurring ant problem. So far, so good in the new house!
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hey daniel, with respect to squirrels in your attic: when i was a kid, we got racoons in our attic, and the dnr told us to put a radio up there, turn it on really loud, and leave it there. we did this, took off for a day, and the racoons were gone when we came back. i don’t know if it would work for squirrels?
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Started reading Leiningen vs the Ants and it triggered flashbacks of this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047264/
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Haven’t actually tried it myself, but as Momma suggested, I just read about the cornmeal trick the other day myself at http://kitsapsoundings.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-helpful-tips.html
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I know I’ll sound like a freak, but that’s a lot of animal lives to take. And they really weren’t hurting you or doing anything harmful. How about instead of killing thousands of animals, we all try not to leave sticky messes in our houses?
Your spouse will probably be happier with you, too!
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If your house is made of wood, carpenter ants can be much more than just a creepy nuisance. They eat wood, and you almost never see them inside your house; only outside, on the house or near the foundation. They can do as much damage as termites (though it usually takes longer). So keep an eye out for them or you might find your beams starting to crumble!
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I am a clean freak… and I have ants. Sorry everyone, but even clean folks get ants. And once they’ve found you, you can’t live clean enough to keep them out. We’ve repainted rooms, we’ve emptied the entire kitchen for three months and then restocked it with air-tight containers, we’ve recaulked every window, tile, shower, etc. seam we could find, we’ve scrubbed our baseboards, we’ve tried cornmeal, we’ve tried exterminators (still on contract – they come sometimes twice a week)… we haven’t used terro yet but you can bet we will as soon as stores open in the morning.
Like another poster mentioned, ants are not even always after food – they’re after water. We’ve had exterminators coming for over a year and still can’t get rid of the ants (they’re completely stumped on why they’re so impossible here – our home is only a few years old).
The other day, I went to get my baby from her nap and her room was covered by thousands of ants (and I had never seen even one in there before). I was beside myself and in tears calling our exterminator to come immediately. I wondered – what could it be? Their answer – her humidifier. The moisture and the heat from the motor. Are you freaking kidding me? So, to those who think ants just love messy folks – nope, also poor kids with stuffy noses who need humidifiers. Really, after a year of exterminator service, I don’t care how humane my approach is. I don’t care if I have to move out for a month, put a tent on our house, and soak the place in poison. No one can find the nests, they have no idea where they’re coming from. I will do whatever it takes.
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I live in Hawaii–everyone, no matter how clean, how sealed their home is, has ants. It’s a fact of life, and better than the other infestations common here (such as spiders the size of your face and footlong centipedes). My husband and I live in a newish military house here, and our tactic is: geckos. We try to keep a gecko or two inside the house–I’m actually not sure if geckos actually eat the ants, but they keep down the population somehow. And, they’re free! (Plus, I hear they can save us a lot on our car insurance, or would, if we drove).
Also, we’ve learned to just deal with the inevitability of ants as much as possible. There’ve been bad times–I once discovered a swarm coming from the light in our bedroom, which covered our ceiling in big black spots, and yesterday they ruined all the juice I had stored in our pantry–but it’s not awful, for the most part.
Plus, we live in Hawaii. Complaining about ants seems pretty petty, given the benefits to living here (and they’re not nearly as expensive a hazard as groceries…$8/gallon of milk, anyone?).
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Well, making your own Terro would be a good use for using up the other half of the box of Borax you bought if you were to make your own laundry detergent as described in the Simple Dollar…
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I have no alternatives to suggest.
Just want to say thanks to you and the all the other commenters’ for their suggested alernatives.
Will look for Terro first. Not sure if they have the product in our part of the world. Could be in another name.
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We moved about one year ago – from a flat on the third floor with no insects whatsoever to a lovely two-story house. Which had a lot more space than our old place, great bathroom (that my wife really loves), and ants.
We don’t hate ants. We just don’t want to share our house with them. So we tried ant traps. We tried poison – albeit sparingly, given that our younger cat is quite fond of ants. They just kept on coming.
After a bit of detective work, I’ve found their (single) entry point. It was a fissure in the doorstep of the one door we never use, about 4mm diameter. We tried blocking that too – with everything from quick-dry cement to SuperGlue – only to find our small black friends either boring through the blockage or (in the SuperGlue case) digging around it.
In the end, on the advice of my mother, we placed one copper coin on top of the ant hole. One cent was the price we had to pay for ant freedom. We didn’t even glue it in place; just placed on top of the doorstep and forced the door closed on top of it. We haven’t seen an ant since – and it’s been almost a year.
It seems ants really really HATE the taste of copper.
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> … you take a business card …
A perfect opportunity to put one of those credit cards to good use, I should think!
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Having a small dog that sniffs/licks EVERYTHING and two small children, what I found out that works best for us is baby powder!
We used to get ants every spring/summer like clockwork until I started sprinkling baby powder everywhere and then they disappeared!
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This has been a very interesting,but can you tell me if this works on Georgia fire ants? Not only are their mound huge I am very allergic to their bite.
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JD, I would LOVE to see a product page from you!!!
Thanks for the tips on ants, too. We have an exterminator; it’s worth the price to me. Our house backs up to a very pretty but incredibly BUGGY meadow. We had too many kinds of bugs to mention here. We were losing the game, so we brought in the special teams — $60 every quarter, after an initial $110 treatment. Worth every cent, in my book.
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Love this post, but what about outside. I live in Canada and believe that my house resides on top of the Canadian Headquarters for ants. We can’t get a good lawn, they do find their way just inside my front door, but don’t have a problem in the house, just the odd one. My problem is really outside. I get up every morning to at least 15 anthills rebuilt on my stone walkway. Any suggestions. Barb
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Ooh! I read Leiningen in middle school. I forgot how good it is, and that’s coming from someone who’s terrified of bugs.
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I hate that picture. We’ve used similar stuff to this for ants successfully before. I don’t have an ant problem at the moment, but my house is invaded by slugs every night (never see them, just the trails). Not sure how they get in, or how to get rid of them.
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we had the same problem- you know what worked for us? We put a composter in our back yard- now the ants do not go into our house, they go to the composter! Of course this doesn’t actually *kill* the ants…
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I wonder if Terro and Bacon Salt would work better for the ants in JD’s house… :p
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This actually just happened to me this week. Those little jerks ruined the dinner rolls I was saving and now its time to strike back! Thank you!
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We tried the cornmeal thing with no luck. We suffered with ant infestations for years at our townhouse and now at our single-family house(they followed us!), and nothing worked until we got the Terro.
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I’m late to the conversation, but last year ants were parading to our dog’s food bowl in the kitchen. We sprinkled a thick line of cinnamon across the threshold where they were coming in, and they quailed before it. (You could watch them walk up to it, pace around and give up.) Easy, cheap and not harmful to the dog himself.
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I recommend a flamethrower. Torch the little bastards!
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I *love* Terro. I have the same hatred of ants that many here do, and it’s the one thing I’ve found that really works.
One thing that I like about Terro is that it you can get it pre-mixed inside little plastic packages that the ants crawl into. More expensive than making my own out of Borax, certainly, but it also allows me to keep the stuff safely out of range of my cats, who eat everything and tend to disperse powder-based solutions while running around (cinnamon, baby powder, etc).
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I have a fear of ants, apparently borne of two experiences: one, standing in a fire ant pile when I was two or three, screaming and not moving as they crawled all over me, and two, falling out of the truck on my first day in first grade at a new school IN SHORTS into an ant bed.
I am scarred for life. At least I don’t remember the first event. Now that my apartment has ants, I’m definitely going to get me some Terro!
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Wow, this post has great timing. I’m just starting to see a few ants inside my apartment and I’ve been contemplating how to launch my attack without killing the cat at the same time. I’m going to try a few tips listed here!
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I seem to have attracted a large amount of ladybirds lately. Every morning I wake up and there are three or four on the window, and at night there seem to be three buzzing round the light bulb! I have tried hoovering them up (I always feel so mean when I do that!!!) but they always come back. I have taped up the windows so I am not sure exactly how they get in. Slightly cuter than ants, but still pesty!
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We had a horrible ant problem in our last house. They first discovered our house because of the cat food dishes. Fortunately, I already kept the dishes in a plastic tray (I am convinced you cannot teach a cat to eat neatly – they either will or they won’t), so I filled the entire tray with 1/2″ of water and put all the dishes in that so there was a moat. Ta da! No more ants around the food. But then the little bastards found the kitchen (roommate who couldn’t keep his dishes clean) and from there it was a losing battle till winter.
One of the things that we found only worked a little but was extremely satisfying to watch was Lysol. I don’t like having it in the house normally, but one of my housemates had a can of it, and after she was cleaning up in the kitchen, out of sheer frustration she sprayed the ants with the lysol. Seriously, it’s one of the single most satisfying ant experiences — they die instantly. INSTANTLY. Where once you had a trail of ants marching towards something edible, you now have a string of ant corpses, which are easily wiped up with a paper towel.
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If anyone reads down this far .. don’t just blame messiness. I swear my fam got to be neurotic about cleaning up every crumb and wiping down everything with bleach and STILL the little buggers would be there as if to welcome us in the morning. Finally, we sprinkled borax on the outside of the window and no more ants .. sounds like terro might be the perfect thing for our new problem .. random ants in an inside bathroom. We can’t figure out where the things are coming from .. ugh!
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In North Carolina, fire ants are moving farther up. For the house, I spray some bug barrier stuff around the foundation, windows, and doors once every other month (You can find this by asking for a chemical that would kill everything besides humans and cats). For my yard, I use something Spectricide makes I call “Ant Treat”. I have no idea what it’s really called, but THEY seem to love it. I certainly don’t want to deprive them of that joy.
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about roaches,
i used to work in a cafeteria as a dishwasher on my old college campus for a couple of years. the head dishwasher old man and i were talking one day about the roaches they have there and that it didnt matter if they sprayed, they would just come back. he told me his trick on how to get rid of roaches, in a cruel and punishing way.
you fill the cap from a gallon of milk halfway with either baking soda or baking powder (i dont remember which), then top it off with sugar. the sugar attracts the roaches, they eat through it and into the baking soda or powder. that causes a chemical reaction in their stomach and the gases can’t escape. you’ll wake up in the morning and see blown up roach parts all over within a five foot radius.
no joke, i had the old man leave them for me to see since i didnt believe him. i suggest putting down newspaper for easy cleanup.
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@Kerstin, #78 – find out where the ladybugs are coming from! I once had an infestation in my windows, and it was the most disgusting and horrifying thing ever. Individually, they’re cute. By the thousands, they smell and are revolting. Ugh!
All the commentors should go spend some time in tropical Africa. We had army ant battalions that were five feet wide and hundreds of feet long. Must have been millions of ants, and they ate everything they found – snakes, scorpions, goats, etc etc. Heebeejeebees.
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Timeliest. Post. Ever.
I came home yesterday to 20 ants (that I could see) crawling around the door in my kitchen. And where there’s 20 … there’ll be a lot more. (*Shudder*) Buying the Terro today.
Thanks JD!
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We have lots of ant’s in our area, and I was so glad the year I discovered Terro. IT IS AMAZING!!!
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Yup. I read the headline and thought Terro. In fact, if you had come up with some other solution, I would have said, “Forget that, use Terro!”
Although… Sugar ants do have their plus sides. I read a story a little while ago about a guy that spilled his favorite soft drink into his keyboard. Usually (most always), this will not break your keyboard, but it did make it sticky, so keys wouldn’t release. Pretty soon, the ant highway was running right into the keyboard, and in a day or two, it was good as new.
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Yeah, need something for the fire ants. Have tried boiling water, spectricide, everything. Even got desperately stupid once and poured gasoline on several mounds. Grass never came back, nothing there but bare ground. corn meal work on them? We’ve got 6 acres, so have quite a few of the buggers.
Beth in Georgia
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Eeeeekkkk!!!
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ants: Grants works for the ants that will go for it, but diatomaceous earth is cheaper and so safe it’s edible. If you have a large invasion force, also put a half cup of sugar outdoors near where they are coming in, to get them out of the house first.
roaches: powdered boric acid wherever they run. Try to keep it away from cat areas.
nothing else I’ve ever tried worked for these pests, but I have not tried the cornmeal or baby powder yet.
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Last summer, we had an ant problem. But having a toddler who puts everything in his mouth, I set out to find a chemical-free solution. I posted what I found here, but I ended up using a mixture of cayenne and cinnamon at the entry point, and that worked. Honestly, I battled up until we had a little rain, then they were gone. My husband (from Ireland…land o’ rain) says the rain always seems to get rid of ants. Go figure.
As clean as you are, ants will find you. And once they do, I swear there’s no kind way to get rid of them. On that note, boric acid is toxic, but only in larger quantities. You might even find it’s an ingredient in your contact lens solution.
When we had a cat, we created a mote, like Megan. In a large bowl or tray (though not so big that she couldn’t reach), we added water, then placed half a brick in the center. We placed the dish on the brick. Problem solved.
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JD,
Please contact us directly at TERRO. Our toll free phone number is:
1.800.837.7644
Or email us at:
expert@terro.com
You can also check out our other products:
http://www.wrsweeney.com
http://www.deerfortress.com
Thanks,
Your Friends at TERRO
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Terro has been a God-send! Especially since its hard to come by Borax in my part of the woods where its a controlled chemical
However, I’ve encountered a nest of ants (the red kind with a very painful bite) that proved too smart for it.
After a half hour from placing the Terro liquid, i found that the little buggers got a whole bunch of loose soil from the garden and built a DAM around the Terro puddle.
I’ll try that Terro ant dust you mentioned if i can find it.
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Terro is great but eventually we get a new infestation every couple of weeks. I think the problem is these Argentinian ants. Their queens live in harmony with one another, so one nest can have several queens. Rumor has it there an enormous interconnected Argentinian ant colony that covers the entire Southwestern United States.
I feel like we’ve been battling this same colony for a couple of years now. Maybe everyone can Terro their ant problems at once, and we might make a dent in the population…
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I agree. I’ve used Terro for years with wonderful success. Glad you found it helpful as well.
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JD, thanks for writing this. The language you used… cathartic, colorful euphemisms, … made it a truly enjoyable read. I chuckled through the whole thing.
Great stuff man, great stuff.
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Now what would be really great is if you can post on how to get rid of *aunts*…
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Thank you for the recommendation — I just bought one and have arranged a trial run, so to speak — my family and I usually spend our entire summer waging a ruthless war with the ants which seem to never die and have infested our home and our garden. I hope this will be the “nuclear option” which finally knocks them out.
I do have one question — is it necessary to re-apply the liquid again and again?
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In California – where the ants are – the termites aren’t. As long as I don’t have to deal with ant highways in the house I’ll take ants over termites any day.
I take the same approach as on eo fthe previous posters. Track down where they are coming in from and tape it off. My previous house had a lot of tape behind outlet plates and light switch plates.
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@ trb
They seem to be collonising the area outside my bedroom window. And they are a very unusual mix – big, small, black with red spots, and red with black spots. I have given up for the moment and sort of hoping the wintery weather conditions we’re having in London atm will kill them off. Still, if this article is to be believed, they may be with us for some time!http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/display.var.572476.0.0.php?act=complaint&cid=1219968
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