Ants in Your Kitchen? A Complete Guide to Keeping Ants Out Of Your House
No homeowner wants to find themselves dealing with a sudden ant infestation. Ants are unsightly, unsanitary, and hard to remove. Even worse, many types of ants can bite and provide stings that can even trigger allergic reactions to certain individuals. One of the last things you want to find when preparing your breakfast in the morning is a trail of ants crawling all over your food. That’s why our expert team of ant exterminators here at A-Action Pest Control has put together this handy list of tips to make your house as unattractive to ants as possible.
Why Are Ants in My House
Food
Ants are scavengers and can enter through the smallest crevices to reach any food sources in your home. The worst part about having an ant problem is that once one of these pests finds a sign of food, the whole colony will soon follow suit. If you have any food left out in your home uncovered, ants will be the first to know about this and soon after, you will be looking to DIY options or wanting to call an ant exterminator.
Moisture
Ants are attracted to any areas that have moisture to get their water source and feed the rest of their colony. These areas can include your doors, windows, and even in your walls if there are any openings for moisture. Moisture can come from leaky pipes, leaky sinks, or poor insulation, so it is important to check your AC unit to make sure everything is working properly.
Entry Points
Ants can fit through almost any opening around your home. Once they are in, their colony will follow shortly after and before you know it, you can have a full-blown ant infestation. It is important to go around your home and look for potential openings that ants could be entering through and make sure to close off these entry points.
How to Prevent Ants in the Kitchen
- Keep your food tightly sealed. Put the open food in your pantry into plastic containers with tight-fitting lids. Wipe down the side of bottles of foods like honey to reduce the food remnants that ants are attracted to.
- Wipe your counters with vinegar. Ants are repelled by the scent of vinegar. By using a solution of equal parts water and distilled vinegar to wipe down your kitchen, you can get remove the remnants of ant trails and disinfect your home in an environmentally friendly way.
- Keep tree limbs and shrubs trimmed away from your home. When trees and shrubs touch your home, they can provide a bridge for ants to enter your home, even bypassing treatments put in place to repel them.
- Tightly seal trash cans. Your average bag of kitchen trash is full of food scraps that ants love. By tightly sealing your garbage can, taking food scraps out of the house, and keeping your outdoor trash can far from the house, you can keep ants at bay.
- Seal up cracks and gaps. Using caulk or another type of gap sealant, fill any cracks and gaps around windows, doors, baseboards, and other openings. Ants can find their way through even the tiniest of cracks!
- Tidy up. Especially after eating, make sure to wipe down counters, sweep crumbs off the floor, and on occasion, do a deep clean of your kitchen to get those hard-to-reach spots that accumulate dirt and food crumbs.
Need to Get Rid of Ants Permanently?
Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s still possible you may find ants in your home. Not only are ants annoying to have around, but they can also be a pain to get rid of as well. You can easily kill the ants you see, but more will take their place. This is because worker ants take food back to the queen of the colony, leaving behind scent trails for other ants to follow.
When you need to get rid of ants in your home once and for all, it’s best to call a professional at 847-744-8538. With recurring pest control treatments, you can get rid of existing ant problems and prevent them from ever coming back. A-Action Pest Control proudly offers ant control services in Illinois and Wisconsin, so you can get back to enjoying your kitchen—free from ants!