Ant Spray with Peppermint Essential Oil

ANTS!!!!

That’s right.  You read it.  Ants.  Those annoying, endless lines of little black bugs crawling all over my countertops and floors.  Following each other all over my dang house in a nice little line!  But, it is just that time of year.  I have toddlers and no matter how many times I tell them, “Keep your food at the table,”, or “Try not to make a lot of crumbs,” I still end up with trails of ants carrying my children’s leftovers back to their nest… again, all in a nice little line.

Usually my husband sprays with a certain brand of poison, which works great, but we have to make sure that the kids and the dog are out of the house while we spray.  So, since I have started with Young Living, I have read a lot about essential oils helping with getting rid of insects.  I thought, “Too good to be true.  No way something that is all natural can do the trick.”  Well, I am here to tell you it can, and I duplicated it in my mom’s house!  Yay!!!

So, here is my process.  It’s hard to get rid of ants.  Any exterminator worth their salt will tell you this. Often times, exterminators get called back out.  But, my mom and I would still wake up to dozens of ants. Since we have used Peppermint Essential Oil for a week, we’ve woken up to 1 or no ants every morning. So, here’s what I’ve done.

Ant Spray Recipe

• 32 oz. spray bottle
• 2 tbsp of Castile Soap
• 20 drops of Peppermint
• 30 oz. Distilled Water

In the 32 oz bottle, mix up 2 Tbsp of liquid Castile Soap, 20 drops of Peppermint and then fill the bottle with distilled water.

Next, you have to create a clean work surface.  Remove EVERYTHING from your countertops.  Wipe everything down.  While everything is off your countertops, spray your counters with the Ant Spray where the walls meet the counters.  When you’re spraying, you have to think that the spray is creating a barrier.  It’s like a line in the sand. Ants on one side, you on the other.  This line has to go around your entire house…that right, I said this was a lot of work! But, it worked for me and my mom.

So once you get your counters done, you need to move to the rest of the house.  I sprayed around every window sill,  every door frame, and along EVERY baseboard in the house, even in the basement.  Draw that line in the sand.  This is how my husband does it with poison too.  You have to cover your home, but by using essential oils, you don’t have the toxic chemicals in your house to worry about. 😉

Once you do your first application, you will start to figure out your problem areas.  For me, it was my big sliding door. So, I sprayed that a few times the first week.  For my mom, it was her kitchen.  I sprayed around her kitchen window, around her pipes under her sink, along the base boards in her kitchen, and around her dishwasher. I did this 3 times in a week.  Here we are on the 8th day of me using Peppermint oil and have only killed 3 ants in 4 days.  MUCH better than dozens every morning!!!

I have continued to make sure I wipe down the counter at the end of the night.  But I haven’t had to mop the floors or be super crazy about keeping the house clean.  There were dishes in the sink last night. There was food in the sink, but I only woke up to 1 ant.  I think we are good!

I hope you do not have ants!  I really do!! Those things are a pain!!  But I really hope you give this a good try!  It’s an awesome feeling to realize that I can do this without any chemicals!!

Megan Harrouff  from  St. Louis, Missouri 
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