The Overlooked Place That Attracts Ants In Even The Cleanest Kitchens

Depending on where you live, you may have to share your kitchen space more often than you would like with unwanted six-legged guests. Out of all insects, ants have a remarkable ability to find their way into your kitchen, no matter how clean you keep it. Obviously, eliminating food sources is one of the easiest and most consistent ways to ensure ants don't try to take up permanent residence. If you find that they keep showing up and you aren't sure why, check your silverware drawer. If you're not cleaning it regularly, it may be attracting your outside guests.

We previously mentioned the cutlery drawer when covering places you might not think to clean in your kitchen, but it's worth highlighting again. Because it's not a surface like a cupboard door, a countertop, or the floor, it can often slip off the cleaning schedule. It's just a thing we don't always think of. But in a busy household, people may be going in and out of the drawer multiple times per day. That amount of activity increases the potential exposure to kitchen grease, crumbs, and sugary splatters, all of which can attract ants. They may even come looking for salt.

Make sure you get your cutlery drawer on a cleaning schedule. It doesn't need to be cleaned daily, but you should clean the tray at least once a month. You can vacuum up any crumbs from the drawer, then wipe and disinfect with a vinegar spray to make the surfaces clean and inhospitable to insects.

One of the big problems with ants in a cutlery drawer is that there are plenty of places for them to sneak around and hide. They could be coming in through the back of the drawer, so you never see them. Then they take whatever food they find back to the colony. You could open a drawer one day and find hundreds of ants that you never noticed on the counter.

The reason one ant becomes 100 is because of pheromone trails. Previously, we've covered using flour as a way to disrupt these trails. When an ant finds food, it will return to the colony and leave a trail, so other ants can find their way back. Vinegar is able to disrupt this pheromone trail, making it doubly important for cleaning up your drawers in the kitchen. It's non-toxic and safe for you and your pets, but it will also prevent ants from finding their way back to food sources. You can also try something like neem oil to keep them at bay.

If you make cleaning your cutlery drawer part of a monthly routine, it shouldn't take much time to clean it properly. Remove the trays and give them a quick cleaning in the sink. The drawer itself can stay in place so you can vacuum, spray, and wipe it clean. The whole process shouldn't take much more than 10 minutes. Compare that to the hassle of trying to get rid of an infestation of ants, and it is definitely worth the effort.