Give Ants The Boot With A Few Items From Your Bathroom

Having ants invade your home can be a lesson in frustration tolerance. You may see one ant here and there but then wake up to find an infestation in your home. However, you can wipe them out with a few typical household items including mouthwash, hydrogen peroxide, and dish soap.

What makes ants even more irritating is that they are attracted to sweet and sugary substances so they tend to go after your food. You will often find them in kitchen cupboards feeding on your sugar, cereal, syrup, or other pantry staples. That's why it is best to keep any open dry food carefully stored in plastic containers with lids. Prevention is key.

You'll also want to regularly clean countertops and appliances. Ants use pheromone trails to navigate, so regular cleaning disrupts their communication system and prevents them from locating food sources. Don't let dirty dishes sit and become another potential food source. Despite your best efforts, you still may occasionally find these insects in your home. Luckily, you can grab a few key bathroom items to promptly get rid of ants.

If you don't have any ant insecticide on hand or don't want to use chemicals, you can create a natural solution that kills ants on contact. Best of all, you may have the ingredients already. All you need is mouthwash, Dawn dish soap, and hydrogen peroxide.

Ants are attracted to the sugars in mouthwash so that will help entice ants to go closer to the spray. Another thing mouthwash does is kill the ants' scent since ants use pheromone trails to navigate. 

Dawn dish soap can kill ants alone if directly applied. The liquid soap fills their spiracles which they use to breathe, suffocating them. It also dries out ants' oily exoskeleton and the soap's thick formula makes it very difficult for ants to get out of the solution. Hydrogen peroxide is also toxic to ants so the combination of it mixed with dish soap is a double whammy.

Mix equal parts of mouthwash, Dawn dish soap, and hydrogen peroxide. Then pour the solution into a spray bottle and spray directly on ants. You can allow the spray to settle for about 15 minutes and then wipe up the solution and the dead ants with paper towels.

Any kind of mouthwash that has sweeteners such as sucralose or saccharin will work. Dawn Platinum is the strongest and boasts about having 5 times the power to kill grease. Also, any typical 3% hydrogen peroxide normally found in stores is sufficient.

You'll want to be careful about where you spray the solution since none of these ingredients are safe for humans to consume. Hydrogen peroxide is a natural bleach, which is why it's used to lighten hair and remove stains so it has the potential to discolor surfaces if left on too long or if too concentrated. Don't leave it on for longer than 15 minutes.