Don’t throw away your coffee grounds. It can get rid of certain pests. A free, ecological and effective remedy.
Every year, we have all these recurring meetings that we would prefer to avoid. One of them is this band of insects that arrive at our home like clockwork as soon as spring is here. Flies, mosquitoes, small flying insects are everywhere, and keeping them away is a challenge. Let’s also not forget the ants, harmless to us and quite clean, but which become an unwanted sight when they parade through our kitchen.
So, we prepare for war with a whole range of traps, repellents and systems to ward off or even eradicate these intruders. Among the weapons at our disposal is a perhaps unexpected element: coffee grounds.
Coffee grounds have so many alternative applications that they have become a valuable waste product, the kind of thing you should never throw away, but rather put aside. And when the first ants show up, it’s time to use it.
Most of us drink coffee regularly at home, so it’s easy to have a coffee machine that produces its share of grounds every day. Why not keep it instead of throwing it away? It costs nothing and you just need to make sure to dry it well, otherwise it will go moldy if you pile it in small closed containers, rendering it unusable.
To fight against ants, using it is super simple. Coffee grounds give off a very unpleasant smell to these critters, so just sprinkle them on the windowsill or around the area where you see them most often. Ideally, do this when it is barely dry, but if the heat is intense and you disperse it well, you can also crumble the still wet coffee grounds, which will dry on their own. Place it especially near where ants enter the house, it will act as a natural repellent.
On the other hand, if you want to use it against mosquitoes or flies, you can burn it slowly, like incense (without flame, just producing smoke) in a metal box or perhaps ceramic or glass. In this case, it must of course be perfectly dry to be able to burn. You can then use it like mosquito repellents or candles.