Each summer, ants invade your home for your greatest despair? Rest assured, an surprisingly simple and natural solution allows them to be kept at a distance.
With sunny days come back picnics, lunches in the garden and … ants. These tireless little workers, although stretching in their organization, quickly become a scourge when they decide to establish a colony in your living room or your kitchen. Each summer is the same scenario: a black line sneaks under the doors, runs along the plinths and disappears in the most unexpected corners. DIY forums and neighborhood groups are full of call messages. Some swear by vinegar, others try coffee grounds or essential oils. But very often, these attempts have no lasting effect. Ants always come back.
On his Instagram account, Thomas Cheneau alias @lhomme_de_menageshared a particularly formidable natural tip. It costs almost nothing, requires no sprayer, gloves, toxic compounds. It is based on a tool that everyone has already held between their fingers. Traced in the right place, on the passage of ants, this invisible barrier disorients them and makes them go back.
The secret? A simple chalk line. Yes, the same as that of school paintings or hoping games. Chalk disrupts the tracing pheromones that ants use to communicate and head. Unable to read their own path, they give up and turn back. Indeed, chalk is mainly made up of calcium carbonate which blurs or masks these chemical signals. The powdery and friable surface of chalk is unpleasant for ants. It sticks to their legs or forms a barrier that they prefer to avoid, a bit as if you were forced to walk barefoot on shinging wet sand.
So the next time you see an ants walk to your pantry, look no further than your supplies box. Sometimes the best defense is in a simple white line on the ground.
