Spring and summer are two of the most enjoyable seasons in the temperate and polar regions. During this time, people and animals make the transition from the chilly winter to lush and cheery spring. When spring comes, the animals also go out of their hibernation to greet the welcoming warmth, and this goes on until summer, when the family goes out to enjoy the summer air. Out of all the seasons, these two are most anticipated by almost everyone: students, families, and even animals.

Unfortunately, spring and summer are also the times when certain little critters come out of their homes and invade the privacy of your kitchen. The problem arises when these critters romp around your kitchen in armies, creating little lines of moving eyesores. What are these critters, you may ask? Why, ants, of course!

Ants are one of the most diverse and distributed insects, having colonized almost every landmass in the world. They dominate most ecosystems, and they form about 15-20% of the terrestrial animal biomass, exceeding that of the vertebrates. Every continent except Antarctica is inhabited by ants, and they’re found in almost all kinds of environments and settings. Unfortunately, this also includes your home, and they are the bane of many homeowners.

The Great Ant Invasion

If you’re going to ask someone how to stop the ants from making a picnic ground out of your kitchen, it is likely that you will get as many answers as there are ants. Each person has different ways of dealing with the problem, and for some reason, one solution doesn’t seem to work as well with another. So if some of the following tips will not work for you, then don’t despair. It doesn’t mean that there’s no hope — it’s just probably that your problem requires another approach.

To get rid of the ants plaguing your kitchen, follow these simple tips.

• Look for any holes or entryways and start from there. Those ants have to come from somewhere, so better start checking out your kitchen for any cracks or holes and plug them up. It is important that you keep your house tight and hole-free to prevent entry not just for the ants but for other, potentially more dangerous pests such as cockroaches or even rats. On a more technical scale, holes and cracks also weaken the structure of your kitchen and your house, so that’s another incentive to have them plugged up.
• Keep food in containers and keep your kitchen clean. Household ants are foragers by nature. They forage for a food source and when they find one, they make a trail on the way back to the colony. This trail is followed by other ants and when they head back to the colony, they do the same thing, reinforcing the trail. When they’ve exhausted the food source, no new trails are marked and the scent slowly dissipates.
  
  To prevent this, put your food in airtight containers and place them in refrigerators to stop the foraging of the ants. Be sure to clean off any food scraps or stains. Also, make sure your kitchen is spotless and clean. When ants don’t see any food in your kitchen, they will go and find other places to forage, hopefully somewhere out of your kitchen and house.



• Use peppermint oil. Some people claim that peppermint oil is effective in keeping away ants from the kitchen. First, find out where the ants are coming from. Most probably, they come from a hole or a crack in the wall, or maybe even from the electric socket. Once you find where they’re coming from, wipe the whole area with peppermint oil. Use a cloth to kill the remaining ants with the oil as well. You can also mix peppermint oil with water and use it to spray on existing ants as well as on the area where they’re coming from. Ants hate peppermint oil and they’ll try to get as far away from it as they can.
• Look for alternative household ingredients that are useful against ants. Do you know that some items in your kitchen can be used as ant repellents? Try mixing white vinegar with some water and then just squirt it in places where ants congregate or go. The vinegar should drive away those ants. Vinegar is non-toxic to your pets and the smell will go away after a few minutes.
  
  Black pepper can also be used to get rid of ants. Just sprinkle it where you see them gather as well as in places where they originated. Like vinegar, black pepper isn’t toxic and is completely harmless.
• Hire a pest control person. If you’re not short on cash, you can hire a professional pest controller to take care of your ant problem. The advantage to this is that they know exactly where to look and how to permanently take care of the problem so it won’t reoccur. A professional will also be able to give you more tips on how to keep your kitchen ant- and insect-free in the future.

Ant problems are not as big as, say, a roach or rat infestation, but they can still be a sore sight in your otherwise clean kitchen. Following the tips should help keep your kitchen free from these useful but sometimes unwelcome foragers.