Managing Home Maintenance Costs

The picture on the left shows how to make a fruit fly trap for the home. It is pretty simple really. All you need is a glass jar some over ripe fruit, some tape and a piece of paper. Put the fruit in the bottom of the jar. Coil the paper into a cone and place it in the jar as shown with the narrow end down. Seal the gap around the jar with tape and you have your first fruit fly trap. These work pretty well, but what do you do with the fruit flies when they are all in the jar. I guess you take them outside and let them go, or perhaps drown them with water. Don’t forget to dispose of the fruit in the garbage and seal the bag.

There will probably be eggs on the surface of the fruit which will hatch within 8 days and then you have a whole new set of fruit flies buzzing around and bothering you.  There are other types of traps to consider.

How to Make a Fruit Fly Trap for the Home

Another approach is to place some cider vinegar in a bowl. Add a drop of dish soap to the vinegar. This breaks the surface tension of the liquid which causes the flies to sink to the bottom and drown. Not only do you catch them, you also kill them preventing any further egg laying by the adults. This is one of the best ways to get rid of fruit flies.

Aside from trapping fruit flies, the best way to get rid of them is to get rid of potential food sources. Wipe cupboards, counter tops etc of fruit flies, you w to make sure there are no crumbs left over. Throw out all overripe fruit and seal the garbage bag. If you have a lot of fruit fly’s you may have to build several traps to capture all of them.

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Ever wonder where fruit flies come from and how they get into your home and how to get rid of fruit flies in the kitchen? These are the tiny flies that most people find very irritating. They seem to come from nowhere getting into your eyes, ears, and nose. In the majority of cases, these fruit flies or their eggs have come home on the fruit that you have purchased at the local grocery store. Anytime there is any fruit that is beginning to ferment, you can be sure that there will be fruit flies. They will be laying eggs on the surface of the skin of the fruit.

If you have fruit in the backyard such as apples, pears, or plums, for example, any that are beginning to ferment will also attract fruit flies. Which will end up in your home. Aside from the obvious of disposing of any fruit that is beginning to go bad, how do you get rid of them?

How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies in the Kitchen

The answer is quite simple really as shown in the picture above. All you need to do is place a piece of fruit in the bottom of a glass or jar. This will attract the fruit flies that are in the surrounding area. The next thing to do is to prevent them from getting out of the glass.

The next step is really simple. Just take a piece of paper, curl it into a funnel and place it in the glass with a narrow inside glass, just as shown in the picture. The fruit flies can get inside the glass through the narrow hole because they are attracted to the fruit. They become confused and cannot find the narrow opening to get out. They will eventually die inside the glass. This is the best way how to get rid of fruit flies in the kitchen or anywhere else around your home.

Now you do not need any chemicals or other harmful materials around your home to deal with fruit flies.

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This year ants have invaded our yard building nests wherever they can. We have interlocking stones for our patio. They love to build their nests under these with the entrance between the joints. There is lots of sand excavated on top. Sand even gets washed into the pool when it rains. We have found thousands of ants in the pool, which get cleaned up by the pool skimmer. We are researching to figure out How to Get Rid of Ants. Over the years, we have also tried a variety of chemicals to get rid of them in addition to natural solutions. The only thing that seems to work is the real stuff, Raid!

How to Get Rid of Ants

Basically, if the ant entrance is between the bricks, I spray raid all around the entrance and into the entrance. This kills them almost immediately! If the ant hill is in the lawn or around shrubs, we have used a lawn spray that is mixed with water to kill the ants and many other insects, including grubs. We have a grub problem also, so this solution does double duty in killing the ants as well as grubs.

But it is a never-ending battle. It is impossible to get rid of all of them, and they just keep breeding and creating new ant nests. You see, there is a little leaf linden in our backyard that is infested with aphids. The tree is far too big to spray, and the ants love the aphids and the sweet sap that leaks from the leaves. As it turns out, this is one of their primary food sources and provides a breeding ground and lots of food for them to consume.

The best we can do is control the number of ant hills. By the way, we also placed ant traps near the entrances to our home inside so that any ants that do come in find the traps and take the poison back to the nest. At best, we have ongoing skirmishes with no one winning the battle.

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Your wondering how to get rid of aphids. One of the best ways to get rid of aphids that have infested your flowers next to using a pesticide of some kind is to use soap spray. The picture that is included with this post is from our garden and the flowers and the leaves were just infested with aphids by the thousands. Not only is it not a pretty sight, but the flowers and the plants will also quickly show signs of stress if something is not done quickly. By stress we mean they will begin to turn brown and eventually die if something is not done about all of these aphids. If the leaves begin to curl you probably have aphids on the inside of the leaves. Just uncurl the leaves to check them out and confirm what you already know is attacking them.

When you first notice aphids on your flowers, it can be a bit sickening to see so many of these insects crawling around.  While it is not nice to look at, they will not hurt you in any way. You just need to get on with the job if removing them.

How to Get rid of Aphids – Use a Soap Mixture

We tried using soap with some success. They were reduced but not totally eliminated and we had to use several treatments before we really made an impact on the number of aphids on these flowers. You will want to use a spray bottle that is leftover from some other liquid. Make sure you clean it out and rinse it thoroughly before using it for the flowers. You do not want to accidentally kill your flowers by spraying Windex or some other liquid on them which would be harmful to the plants. Once you have your spray bottle follow the directions outlined below and be prepared to apply several applications of the mixture to the flowers to get the best results.

Mix the following in a spray bottle:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 drops of liquid dish soap
4 cups warm water

Shake well, and spray the leaves and stems of infected plants. Also spray the surrounding plants to get rid of a current aphid problem. Spray weekly to keep new ones away. Also, spray the top side of the leaves and flowers as well as the underside. There are just as many aphids on the underside of the flowers and leaves. You need to get rid of all of them to ensure that they do not harm the plants.

Safety tip: The first time I made this solution I used way too much dish soap. It burned the leaves of my flowers. You really only need a couple of drops of soap in the spray bottle. You may also need to apply the soap mixture several times and soak the leaves each time.

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