All Purpose Cleaner and Ant Killer
Last updated: 4/17/04

A long time ago I saw a formula for making a window cleaner on TV. I wrote it down, told my Wife, Claudia, about it, and asked how much we were paying for Windex. Well, we were paying far too much compared to the ingredients in the formula. She made up some and put it in a used spray bottle. It turned-out that it did as good a job at cleaning windows as Windex, maybe better. The stuff was so easy to make and cheap that we started using for all sorts of cleaning chores. My wife even uses it to remove old wall paper.

A few days ago the ground outside thawed and we got our annual invasion of ants coming in through sliding glass door in the sun room--lot's of them. We were out of bug spray. My wife grabbed the "formula" and sprayed them, hoping to slowdown the column of ants marching to our dog's drinking bowl. It slowed them down alright. It killed them! Yet, it seems harmless enough to us, our dog, and our cat.

We have long lost the original formula. Claudia has made it for so long that she eye-balls the ingredients. Here is the formula which she recreated and tested today:

3 cups Water

1/2 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup non-sudsy ammonia

1/2 cup rubbing alcohol (Isopropyl alcohol)

Simple, cheap, and effective.

Rubbing alcohol sold in the United States is denatured. That means it has been intentionally made unsuitable for human consumption (may be poisonous), That may be what is killing the ants. Of course, it can be used externally.

When the weather gets warmer, I'm going to try it on the Japanese beatles that attack our garden every year. We don't have any roaches to experiment with. They would probably just get drunk.

Larry

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