How do I keep Mom from keeping food in her room?
I am constantly finding ants in my mothers room. She constantly snacks in her room leaving crumbs and keeps candy and salted peanuts in her room. Today the ants were in the glass with her miralax that I had just layed out. Of course they were next to the boxes of chocolate mints and chocolate covered cherries and Planters peanuts. This morning I though that things were going to quickly escalate between us about her continuing to keep food in her room. She is not senile, has all her faculties, this is a control and territory issue I believe. I backed off this morning but told her I was not bending over to clean ants and her still keep food in the room. I just had back surgery 2 weeks ago. I have to save my bending over to clean up after her 2 little dogs. Any suggestions would be helpful. It sounds terrible, daughter leaves mother in ant covered room. But short of a physical altercation which I would leave the house before things even got close to that do I do. She insists that if the seal is intact on the candy that it wouldn't attract ants, I don't know. All I know is the ants keep showing up in her room and she is the only one storing food in her room.Help!
I tend to be a clean freak. I got worse when I started caring for my mom. I was obsessed with the house being spotless and as germ free as possible. One day while vacuuming, I tilted my mom's favorite chair back to vacuum underneath it, and found a half eaten sandwich. I was like, wtf? I picked it up and tossed it, thinking my mom had simply dropped it and I just didn't see it right away. Time goes on and I forget the incident. Until the roaches started showing up. Oh. My. Freaking. God. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, they were every damn where. I went from never seeing even one, to mass infestation almost overnight. I was horrified and freaked out, stressed and sickened almost beyond endurance. I moved the fridge to clean behind it one day and they were crawling back there by the dozens. I shrieked to high heaven and leaped backwards, my heart pounding and my hands shaking. I grabbed the broom and was whacking them left and right. I was so paranoid after that, I looked for roaches every waking moment of every damn day. And I'd find them. I couldn't sleep at night, sweating bullets over them crawling in the kitchen, I'd be up at 2-3 a.m, killing them one at a time as they came out. I was obsessed.
I finally decided to tear the damn house apart and clean every damn inch of it from top to bottom. I was clean to begin with, but I figured I'd get even cleaner. And that's when I started to find the hidden, half eaten, and sometimes moldy, food all over the house. I'd find half eaten stuff in places I never thought to look before. In drawers that contained nothing but pictures. In my mom's underwear drawer. In the closet on the top shelf. I found a half eaten...and open...container of chicken salad...with a roach in it...under her bed. **shudder** I tore the house apart after that and found all of her hiding places, got rid of that crap, got roach bait, and end of problem. She could still walk at the time, so after this fiasco I was always alert and looking for hidden food and of course, I'd find it now and again. There was no sense in bringing it up, or bitching about it because she had already forgotten she had hid the stuff. I just tossed what I found every day, and I looked every single day. She eventually came out of that phase and quit doing it, thank God.
With your mom, since she's mentally sharp, I'd say let her live with the ants. She's sharp enough to see them herself without you pointing them out, right? Then she's sharp enough to know what attracts them. She's sharp enough to make the decision to keep candy in her room, she's sharp enough to to know the consequences.. I'd leave her...and the ants...alone. When she wakes up one morning with ants on her face, she'll stop in no time.
....Which reminds me of a story of a buddy of mine years ago. She told her son not to keep candy in the room, it attracted ants. Kid wouldn't listen and kept doing it. One morning, my buddy heard screaming from the kid. She ran in there, and yup, the kid himself was covered in ants. Needless to say, he didn't keep candy in there anymore. He wouldn't listen to mom for squat...but those ants taught him real quick. lol Live and learn. I guess your mom will learn the hard way, too. So be it. I wouldn't sweat it another minute.
If she doesn't feel like getting out of bed and trekking to the kitchen for a quick snack. It would be nice for her to have some airtight containers of snacks nearby. My 88 year old dad loves to snack and always has a candy dish nearby. Luckily, he doesn't have ants.
Jeanne, that is an incredibly good question. Yeah! If they're so smart, how come ants don't know to lie in wait in the dining room where it all happens, eh? I had honestly never considered it from that point of view.
In this particular case, though, I think the regular bedroom appearances are probably related to how long the food is in situ and how reliably it's kept in its containers. They also have to be able to carry their shopping home, which I suppose is why anything in a wrapper, even if it's not airtight, will pose insuperable logistical problems. Ants - it must depend on the type of ant, too - are remarkable in their ability to reconnoitre, forage, scent far-off food sources, etc. They will definitely know where in their territory there are crumbs to be counted on.
Quite admirable in its way, I often think, as I run to get help from my chickens with yet another nest I've dug up in the garden...
Kamikaze Dust Bunnies
Kamikaze Dust bunnies
rain down on me
blades from the ceiling fan
flinging them free
Under the bed creatures
spy tempting feet
webs on the wall
right there to see
feline stalking through
backyard prairie
obstacle course hallway
makes it too hard to flee
tomorrows treasures
just within reach
what fun would we have
if we were neat?
LA 1998
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