It seems like every weekend I do battle with the ants. This afternoon I opened looked underneath my bathroom sink to find three or four ants just chilling, like they owned my apartment.
I vacuumed them all up because I wanted to see how and where they were getting in. I wasn’t convinced I got it right the last time I made some observations. So I just sat down on my bathroom floor with a flashlight and just waited for new ants to emerge.
After a few minutes, I saw two ants, at the side of the cabinet, and I had no idea how they got there. It looked like they just materialized out of thin air. It took about 30 more minutes and observing four or five more ants to realize they were coming in and out of two separate points of ingress. These were areas I had not noticed before.
One of them was a tiny hole near the ground where the tile meets the wall. The other was a wide gap near the top of the sink cabinet. This gap went behind a panel in the cabinet, which I realized I had to remove if I was gonna get full access to the gap to seal it off.
The panel was held in place with eight screws, all of which were hard to get at. To remove these screws, I had to get on back and laid down inside the cabinet. It’s also one of those situations where something is easier to remove than to put back. When it’s time to attach it again, I won’t have anything to hold it place while I awkwardly put the screws back in. That’s a future me problem however.
Armed with this new knowledge and access, I grabbed some sealant, put on my respirator, and sealed up these points of ingress. Every single time I seal more areas off, I quietly hope this is the last time I need to do this, at least for the bathroom area. So far, every time I check the next day or so, I see more ants.
Let’s not even talk about the kitchen situation.