How to Fight Ants With Borax

Borax is a great way to get rid of ants, roaches and other six-legged pests.

If you have serious ant problems and have exhausted natural options like pennyroyal, herbal pesticides and a deep housecleaning, you may need to step up your offensive. While you certainly can call in the big guns--pest control experts who will use serious insecticides to rid you of your ant problem--you may want to try one more home effort before you take this step. Borax will actually kill many different types of insects by dehydrating them until they are nothing but little shells. While it will not destroy a nest of ants unless you take it to them directly, it will get rid of any foolish enough to come into your home.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Borax
• Small scoop
• Vacuum or broom

1. Target areas of the house that need to be treated. Identify problem areas. These will often be the areas of the house where ants have access to food, like the kitchen and potentially the game room, or water, like bathrooms and other sink areas. You may also have some issues with bedrooms particularly if they have adjacent bathrooms or if you have teenagers that like to snack while they study.

2. Sprinkle a thin line of borax along the back edges of counters and under cabinets if need be. You can do this by pouring it, but generally it is easier to use a small scoop. The borax just needs to be along the very back of the counter, and you do not need a lot of it. A very thin line is easy to avoid when you are using the counters and will be enough to attract the ants' attention so that they will eat it.

3. Make sure that there is borax on the window sills or other potential entrances to your home. Often if ants find something tasty near the entrance to your home, they will change their entrance "plan" and simply consume whatever is closest. By making the borax available right at your doors and windows, they may eat it and then leave rather than coming inside. The end result is the same either way, but you increase your odds of success by placing the borax near where the bugs are coming in.

4. Make a small trail of Borax around the edges of all rooms. You do not need any more along the edges of the rooms than you do in any other part of the house. Just use the scoop to draw a thin line around the room. If you have carpet, then you can just follow the line between the wall and the carpet. If you have hardwood floors then simply trace around the edge of the molding.

5. Vacuum up the excess once the problem is eliminated. Once your ant problem is solved, you can vacuum or sweep up the borax to keep it from simply creating a mess on your floors as it spreads.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have pets, then you may not be able to use this method since your pets may also eat the borax and become ill. Make sure you consult an expert before implementing any type of pest control near your animals.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish