The Ants Go Marching - "Green" Ant Control

Today was such a pleasant day.  We ran lots of errands.  Ayden was in an adorable, cuddly, babbly mood all day and the weather was wonderful!

With this wonderful weather have come some ant friends.  I have seen lots of "natural" ant bait recipes on Pinterest, most of which contain Borax.  Since I am starting a journey to a chemical free home, I am putting forth some effort to look up any and all products on the Environmental Working Group's website.  Borax always seemed harmless enough since you find it in almost every homemade laundry detergent recipe.  I assumed it was harmless enough but decided to look it up anyway.  I was actually quite surprised at its ratings...

It gets a big fat F.  The worst rating possible...
{click here to see the actual webpage}

Here is the breakdown of the ingredients with individual scores.

Sooo... It is safe to say that I won't actually be making the homemade detergent that I had originally purchased the Borax for.  The rating for the environment, on the other hand, was wonderful.  That makes me feel okay to use it for things like ant control.  I am glad that I can put this huge box to some sort of use.  Here is what I did:

Mix Borax with honey (of course, honey!!) to make a paste.
{you can also use sugar, maple syrup, or anything else sweet and tasty}

Serve it up on a silver platter and wait.
They WILL find it...

Within a day the ant traffic was SIGNIFICANTLY less. And after a couple of days, they were gone. I don't really want to think about what happens to them once they get it home to their colony.  I'm not a huge fan of pests in my living space, but I am still tender hearted when it comes to killing living creatures.  (I was totally that teacher who caught the spiders and centipedes that we found in the classroom, displayed them in a bug cage or clear cup for the day, and then took my whole class out with me to set them free.  Yup, I did that.)

Anyway, I personally won't be using Borax in any way that would allow it to be absorbed, ingested or consumed by my family (high concern for developmental and reproductive concerns... no thank you!) but it is an environmentally friendly way to deal with those pesky ants!

Do you have any green pest control methods?  I'd love to hear about them!

~Sarah