Whenever you open a cabinet - there they are again! The first thing most of us do is grab the Yellow Pages and look for the ant control specialists who can skillfully destroy them all for us. But before you do that, here are some tips to help you get rid of them yourself.

Prevention Is The Best Solution - Keep It Clean

Ants come into your house looking for food, so a great and easy way to do your own ant control is to always put food away. Don't leave food out anywhere where they can get to it. Ants find food using their sense of smell, so keep this in mind. Keep your floors and counters as clean as possible and watch out for things like bread crumbs. Do some regular sweeping to make sure you get everything. Keep all foods sealed up in containers that don't allow the smell to escape. Putting things away in cabinets isn't enough for these tiny little creatures; they can find their way into every nook and cranny. Remember that if they can smell it, they can find it.

The Chili Powder Solution - A Strategy That Works

One way to keep your home free of ants is to keep them from getting inside in the first place. Put something along your entryways and windows, or any other place where they enter the house. Old folk remedies recommend sticky stuff like petroleum jelly or nasty stuff like boric acid. But one of the most proven ant control remedies that actually works is to sprinkle chili powder at all points where they enter. The spicy flavor of this powder is guaranteed to send them looking for food sources somewhere else.

Kill Them All With Insecticide Bait

Lots of people prefer a natural ant control solution, but here's a great method using insecticide that works quite well in destroying whole colonies. They make insecticides that are meant to be "bait" for ants, and many of these are non-toxic. You spread it around near their nests and also in areas where they go looking for food. They find it and, thinking it's food, take it back to the nests. All the ants munch on it and die, and eventually the queen partakes of it as well and either becomes infertile or dies. It's a nasty-sounding way to get rid of them, but it works very well against fierce colonies that nothing else will get rid of.

Call The Ant Control Experts

When you're finally at wit's end and nothing seems to destroy the colonies, you can always give ant control specialists a call. They've got the tools and expertise to get rid of the little buggers once and for all. You can also pick their brains on ways to make sure that your home stays free of ants and their colonies. There's nothing nicer than seeing them disappear once and for all.