As some of you know, I am dealing with a minor ant infestation at my home. I have narrowed down their general points of entry as underneath my kitchen sink and my bathroom sink.
This weekend, I cleaned out the areas underneath of both those sinks to look for more specific points of ingress. I started with my kitchen sink. It was a good opportunity to give that area a good scrubbing and cleaning. It’s where I put my garbage receptacle, so it was due for a cleaning, even without the ant infestation.
During the cleaning, I was able to see ants popping into view from two places, where the cold and hot water pipes come up from the floor below. There are gaps in between the cabinet and the pipes and they were using them to get into my apartment.
The bathroom sink cleaning and examination was less conclusive. The water supply pipes come out of the back wall and I didn’t see any ants coming out from there. I also saw a lot fewer ants in this area compared to the kitchen. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
So the question was, what to do? On my way back from dinner with my parents, I stopped by Walmart and got these ant bait traps made by Raid. These traps don’t kill the ants immediately and let them bring back poison back to the nest, so they kill the ants you don’t see. I laid these traps down in both the kitchen and the bathroom, right near the ants. Unfortunately, they had no interest in them at all. I ordered a different bait trap on Amazon that seems to work better than the Raid one I bought today. It arrives on Tuesday.
In the meantime, I sealed off the gaps between the pipes underneath my kitchen sink. If this is indeed where they’re getting in, hopefully this means they won’t be doing that again. The issue is that means I’ve also trapped any ants that are currently in my apartment already.
I feel like I’ve made some progress in the kitchen area but I need the bait traps that actually work. I also still need to figure out where they’re making entry in my bathroom. If I get bait traps that work, that becomes less of an issue in the bathroom so we’ll see on Tuesday.