Irish Spring Soap is often touted as an effective natural deterrent for insects and mice. The method is simple: grate the soap bar next to your plants and its distinctive scent will keep the critters away.
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that Irish Spring soap specifically keeps bugs away. While certain scents and chemicals may repel some insects, the effectiveness can vary and is dependent on factors such as the type of bug, the concentration of the repellant, and the individual sensitivity of the bug.
What does Irish Spring soap repel? It can help keep bugs, roaches, and deer away. When you sprinkle a barrier of Irish Spring shavings around your home, it can help repel small animals, like mice and chipmunks, bugs, and even deer, according to Real Homes.
Using a mixture of Dawn dish soap and vinegar is a common DIY method to kill ants and deter them from entering your home. Here's how it works: Ingredients: Dawn dish soap: This acts as a surfactant, breaking down the ants' exoskeleton and suffocating them.
Household items like citrus fruits, black pepper, peppermint oil, cayenne, thyme, and lavender can create natural ant repellents. Great for avoiding pesticides or conventional ant traps! Mixing parts of these substances with water in a bottle and spraying the solution around the house can keep ants at bay.
Natural deterrents.
If you know where ants are getting in, you can line these entryways with things that ants hate. Salt, baby powder, lemon juice, chalk, vinegar, bay leaves, cinnamon, or peppermint oil are a few items that you have around your home that will stop ants from coming inside.
Vinegar only remains effective for as long as the scent lingers. When the solution dries up, homeowners need to reapply the solution in the problem areas to keep ants away. However, it's important to remember that vinegar shouldn't be treated as the main line of defense against ant infestations.
When mixed with water to make a soapy solution, Dawn dish soap breaks the ant trail scent, disrupting their movement and preventing an infestation build-up. Using Dawn dish soap delivers a near instant impact on the ants compared to slower working solutions like borax or vinegar-based repellents.
If you leave toothpaste, soap scum, or hair care product remnants in the sink or on counters, ants might find a feast. They are particularly attracted to sweet, sticky substances, which is why spilled toothpaste or shampoo can be a major draw.
Dawn, a commonly used dish soap, contains surfactants that disrupt the exoskeleton of insects, leading to their dehydration and eventual death. This property makes it an effective bug repellent, as it can deter a wide range of insects, including flies, ants, and mosquitoes.
Repel Indoor and Outdoor Pests
It's a well-known hack used by green thumbs to keep pests out of their gardens, but it can also help prevent them from entering your home. The reason Irish Spring soap works well as a deterrent for bugs, rodents, and other unwelcome critters is the strong scent.
For example, that Irish Spring soap can repel rodents by using shavings to create a barrier around your home to deter mice and rats. The idea is that the rodents will be turned away by the strong smells of the perfume that is used in Irish Spring.
Simply mix a cup of Epsom salts into a spray bottle of water. Make sure the solution is properly mixed and spray it directly onto any ants when you see them. The salt will dehydrate the ants and eventually kill them. You can safely handle Epsom salts, which are non-toxic for kids, pets or other animals.
Its strong, pungent aroma is unpleasant to many animals, including squirrels, making it a popular choice for natural pest control.
“The most effective method for controlling an ant infestation is using ant baits. Set them out anywhere you see ants and expect a party,” Gangloff-Kaufmann says. “If you still see ants around the house, try a few different brands of baits until you find one that's appealing to this particular colony.”
Unfortunately, it's not an instant knockout. It takes a bit of time for the baking soda to do its magic and wipe out the ant colony. When ants consume the baking soda mixed with a tempting treat, it gradually disrupts their digestive system, causing them to meet their untimely demise.
Cayenne or Black Pepper
Sprinkle pepper around the areas where ants access the house. Or, according to a Texas A&M study, for a more permanent fix, create a water and pepper solution and spray it directly onto the ants. A Texas A&M study found that a water and pepper solution was effective at killing ants.
Ants typically find the smell of pepper irritating. So, sprinkle pepper around your baseboards and behind appliances, or anywhere ants generally are located, and the scent will keep them away.
Soap. Common household substances like glass cleaner, liquid dish detergent, and hand soap can deter ants by removing the scented pheromone trail that leads ants to the food sources. Mix spray-on glass cleaner and liquid dish detergent, then spray areas where ants congregate.
1. Vinegar + Tea Tree. If you only see ants occasionally, you can try to deter then with a natural homemade ant repellent. Vinegar & tea tree oil have strong odors that control ants by masking their pheremone trails, and repelling them away from sprayed areas.
Vinegar is an extremely effective natural carpenter ant deterrent. It disrupts their pheromone trails and the smell prevents them from returning. Mix a 1-to-1 ratio of water to vinegar in a spray bottle (both apple cider and white vinegar will do).
The drench method is one of the best methods to eliminate an ant hill in your yard. To do this, dilute 1 teaspoon of Supreme IT per gallon of water and use 1 to 2 gallons of the finished product in a sprayer, then apply the solution over the top of the mound and allow the dilution to flood the entire ant hill.