Stop Overspending on Ant Traps—Make Your Own for 2 Cents!

Well it’s that time of year again, the gardens are growing well and the bugs are filling their bellies looking for more food. If you live in an old house like me this means dealing with ants roaming around in your kitchen.

I told myself this year I was done with spending all that money to get 4 traps that dry up in a week. If you look closely at the box these traps are primarily made of 2 ingredients – Sugar (which we all know ants love) and Borax which is a hydrated form of sodium often used in green laundry products.

Doing some quick back of the napkin math you could make these 100 times cheaper with a few simple ingredients and the better part of 5 min. Let’s get started!

What You Need:

• Borax powder
• Sugar
• Water
• Small containers (like bottle caps or similar)
• Cotton balls or small pieces of sponge

Instructions:

1. Mix Your Ingredients: Combine 1 part borax with 3 parts sugar in a bowl. This sugar will attract the ants, while the borax acts as the killer ingredient. Mix them thoroughly.
2. Prepare the Solution: Dissolve your borax-sugar mix in warm water to create a syrupy solution. The consistency should be thick enough to cling to a cotton ball or sponge but not so thick that it crystallizes quickly.
3. Set the Traps: Soak cotton balls or small pieces of sponge in this syrupy solution. Then, place them in shallow containers – bottle caps work well for this.
4. Position Your Traps: Distribute these traps in areas where you’ve noticed ant activity. Common spots include kitchen counters, near doors leading outside, and along the walls in damp areas.
5. Check and Replace: Check the traps every few days. Replace them with fresh bait as needed until you notice a significant drop in ant presence.

How Far Does a Box of Borax Go?

A 1.8kg box of borax can make a vast amount of ant trap solution. Considering you only need a small amount (about a teaspoon) of borax for each batch of ant trap mixture, you could theoretically create hundreds of individual traps from one box. Specifically, if each trap uses about a quarter teaspoon of borax, you can make up to 2,880 traps from a single 1.8kg box (assuming there are about 720 teaspoons in 1.8 kg of borax).

You can get a box of this stuff for $7, assuming you’re out of sugar and cotton balls tag on another $4.50 and your looking at a cheap DIY solution for a total of $0.018 cents per trap. A far cry from the store-bought options that are nearly $2 each.

This DIY solution not only helps you save money but also gives you control over the ingredients used in your home, keeping it safer and more natural. Try this method out and say goodbye to those pesky ants without breaking the bank!