Little Rishi

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Getting rid of ants in the house

For some reasons, this year, we have had more than usual number of ants in our house since Spring. At first, we decided to ignore them but lately, the problem grew worse, as the number of ants inside the kitchen area continued to grow. Finally, I decided to take action and went to our local grocery store and bought a spray can of ant killer for about $3.49. The spray can worked well and killed the ants on contact but it didn't do much to stop ants from returning. In addition, since we have two small kids at home, I didn't like using the chemicals in our house, and hate the smell of the chemicals.

Searching on the internet, I found that boric acid tends to kill ants. So we switched from our chemical spray can to boric acid, placing the acid on sheets of paper at couple of places in the kitchen and putting some sweetener in the middle of boric acid. The acidic powder did attract some ants but for most part, it was another failed effort on our part, as most ants continued to stay away from it. May be we hadn't applied the boric acid properly or may be the boric acid wasn't being very effective. We decided to give up on its use as we wanted to get a quick solution that would get rid of growing colony of ants.

Last week, we went to Home Depot and while we were discussing the issue with an associate, a customer in the aisle told us about Combat Ant Killer gel. She told us that she had used it before and found it very effective. We decided to go with her recommendation; the gel cost us about $4.97 plus tax for 27 grams (can also be bought from Amazon.com (Combat Ant Killing Gel 27grams) and other stores).

The Combat gel supposedly attracts ants but doesn't kill them right away. Instead, ants carry it back to their nest which helps the gel get to other ants and their eggs, effectively getting rid of the ant problem. According to instructions, it takes about 3-5 days to get rid of ants after applying the gel. We applied the gel at night time; the gel was easy to apply using the syringe type device in which it comes. We applied little amount of gel at different parts of our kitchen walls where we have seen ants. Within minutes of applying the gel, we saw ants go towards the gel. In the morning when we woke up, most of the ants seemed to have just vanished! There were a few living ants still visible but for most part, the steady line of ants that we had grown accustomed to over the last few days - that was gone! Hopefully, with a couple of more applications of Combat gel over the next few days, we would completely solve the problem of ants.

I thank that lady at Home Depot who told us about the Combat gel because we were just sick and tired of having so many ants in the house. Am sure there are lot of other options that are probably available for getting rid of ants in the house, but for us, Combat gel did the trick.

Related articles:

Wikihow.com: How to Get Rid of Ants

eHow.com: How to Get Rid of Ants Naturally

Labels: frugal, frugality, saving tips

posted by Little Rishi @ Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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