Ants are crawling around our house

Ant traps are surprisingly ineffective, in my experience. The theory is that they go in smelling delicious food, then carry it back to the nest where the rest of the colony discovers it is actually delicious poison! The ants seem to prefer the real food, though.

One good way to foil them is to erase all their scent trails. If you know where the ants are coming from and where they keep congregating, wipe the intervening areas with simple soap and water to wash off their trails. Ants depend on those trails for food runs, and otherwise they're stuck having to forage around blindly, which is your cue to stomp them.

I'd love to do the baking soda trick, but there's a good chance the dog will come in and eat the whole works when we're not looking. >_<

Jam it back in, in the dark.