DIY fruit fly trap

It's summer, or suppose to be summer let's not talk about that, either way fruit flies have arrived. I always have problems with fruit flies. The easiest way to get rid of fruit flies is to not attract them in the first place. Keeping your kitchen clean, washing dishes right away, eating fruits and veggies quickly or storing them in the fridge, but really who does that. Things get left out, things get forgotten, fruit flies find their way into your home, it happens. It happens to me a lot because I have a compost pail that apparently lets flies in to it. I may also let dishes pile up and lose a apple, lemon, or lime on the back of my counter on occasion. Basically I don't have a spotless kitchen.

I do however have a really simple and basically free way of dealing with the fruit flies. I make fruit fly traps from things I already have lying around my kitchen. I have 3 traps in my home, 2 in the kitchen and one in my animal room, because animals attract flies too. I have 2 made out of 2-liter soda bottles. It's quite simple to make, take your bottle, you can even use a smaller 12-ounce size, or whatever plastic bottle you have on hand. Cut the bottle top off somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way down. It depends on the shape of your bottle, you will cut the top part off and invert it into the base you have left. You want it to not fall all the way in but you want it to be short enough to put liquid in the bottom of it to attract and then drown the flies.

Here are my traps made from 2-liter bottles. One I've had for a few years and one I made more recently.

The flies will fly into the bottle but not be able to find their way back out. As a lure for the flies put a some apple cider vinegar in the bottom, enough for them to drown in once then get in there. At first I put in a squirt of liquid soap as well to make it easier for them to drown but I've found that not necessary. The traps are easily refreshed by dumping out the dead fly vinegar and adding more. I've also found wine and soy sauce work as attractants as well but those need to be changed more often because they seem to grow mold more readily than the apple cider vinegar.

If you like Starbucks frappacinos you can make a no cut fly trap EXTREMELY easily, or any other sort of drink cup with a dome lid. Just clean the cup after you've enjoyed your drink invert the lid in the cup and a fly trap has been made.

The hole for the flies to get in is a bit bigger than a 2-liter but I this did not seem to be an issue with them finding their way out. There was a good amount of drowned flies in the apple cider vinegar. Can you see them all in there? Trust me they are in there.

Simple, cost effective, reuse, and effective at their job. Does it get better than that, oh yeah no more fruit flies everywhere!!

Carpet stain remover

1 little squirt of dish soap

an ounce or 2 of white vinegar

an ounce or 2 of water, hot if you want (I've used cold and hot and works well both ways)

I use an old toothbrush to mix and apply the mixture. I know everywhere tells you not to scrub, rub, or do anything but blot stains but how many of us really sit there and blot our little hearts out. So I scrub scrub scrub and it works great. I usually just use a clean cloth and blot/wipe dry. Sometimes I use a damp cloth followed by a dry one but either way I get the same results.

My carpets are the typical too light beige that apartments like to use for whatever reason so I don't really need to worry about taking color out but it always a good idea to do a color test before using a spot cleaner.

I am not big on cleaning but I also kinda am. I don't keep my place clean on a daily basis, if you were to just drop by you might find a quite clean and "normal" looking place or you could find a place that looks like a tornado has hit. I get into cleaning moods and EVERYTHING gets cleaned then. Every part gets a good clean every one or two months and it's usually that often that I get to spot cleaning the carpet.

Most of the stains on my carpet are pet related. Spots of cat puke and other gooey bits of cat messes, dropped bits of canned food that get left unseen for a while. There are also some husband food spots, hehe. I had some good photos to go with this post from months ago but when my computer crashed I lost them. At that point I had a lot of big nasty black stains all over my carpet. They were from cat medicine, one of the cat's was having slight hairball blockage issues so she was on a stool softener and it was very sticky liquid and so some would get on the floors. She was on it for about a week and after 2 days I gave up on cleaning the spots right away so a few weeks later when I finally went to clean them all they had attracted A LOT of dirt and grime. There was one spot where she spit the whole dosage back onto the carpet and I did blot it right away with a damp cloth but that stuff is REALLY sticky so it did little. This cleaner worked wonders and my carpet is all bright and shiny now.

Jean Insulation

In my inbox today is Low Impact Livings newsletter. In it they discuss greening your jeans. The one part I'd like to share specifically is about denim insulation. It is suppose to be great stuff, better rated than fiberglass, no nasty chemicals, and reuse perhaps at its best. If I ever have the opportunity to build a house or re-model or things of that nature I will definitely look into denim insulation, but I live in an apartment right now and am living the wonderful life style of pay check to pay check and barely making it by so that is something that is not in the foreseeable future.

I always wondered where they got the denim for denim insulation and figured a lot of it was probably virgin denim, which I am sure it is, I have not done any research or read much on what it is actually made from in that regards. I have a lot of pairs of old jeans that no longer fit or are just busted, mostly because I am still the same size I was in MIDDLE SCHOOL and actually wear some of the same exact clothes I was then.

I was glad to see in this article a link to donate your jeans to be made into denim insulation, I don't think I have ever seen that before, mystery solved on where they do get some of the old jeans for insulation. Oh wait what's that I literally just now visited and read the page and they are NO LONGER TAKING DONATIONS! Ok well guess I can't turn my old jeans into insulation just yet. They will have to sit in a pile in the closet for a few more years maybe. Maybe I should just hang them as faux art on my poorly insulated bedroom walls and maybe they will do a bit of insulating that way.

Oh well I guess I could just go and delete this post since I was all excited about actually finding a place to donate my jeans for use in insulation but still check out the Greening Your Jeans post, it has some other info, although as I did look through that earlier, it says Gap has organic cotton jeans and I haven't been able to actually find them anywhere, maybe they made one pair once and so they get put on the list. Well this post is ending in a bit of a downer, coffee is ready time to drink it out of my nice and shiny mug.

Cleaning stainless steel coffee mug

Dirty coffee stained stainless steel mug

Add a bit of automatic dishwasher powder detergent (I currently have Planet brand so even your green detergents should work) and fill, all the way to the top, with hot water, water straight from the tap will work too but it may need to sit a little longer.

Let sit overnight or for a few hours depending on severity of stains, covered might help a bit too. A little light scrubbing, sometimes just a bit of swishing of water gets it all off, and you have a bright and shiny coffee mug again.

I've also had success cleaning ceramics mugs this way but can't find any other way to easily clean my stainless steel mug.

Heat Wave, some cooling tips.

I'm a summer person, I much prefer the warm, even hot, weather.  I just am so miserable in cold weather.  I went to Seattle in June 6 years ago and I froze my ass off, it was in the 60's. 

That being said I don't like my apartment being hot, I like it to be comfortable, I'd say 78 or so is pretty perfect for me.  I refuse to use my ac because that is not really needed except in extreme conditions, plus I have no idea how old my ac unit is and it pretty much sucks and uses WAY TOO MUCH electricity for minimal output.  

So how do I keep myself cool, with fans of course but placement of said fans is key.  The windows in my apartment are all on the same side so I don't get good flow by just opening windows.  We are upstairs corner unit, out master bedroom is on the corner, gets very hot. 

Two years ago the complex cut down the big tree shading my corner bedroom so it tends to get MUCH hotter in here than it use to.  Since the tree was cut down we demanded a ceiling fan in our dining room and got one, that helps a lot since it is in the back corner of the apartment and otherwise there would be NO flow in that area what  so ever.  I have one big box fan I put in the window of the bedroom and point blowing OUT.  I then open the screen door to the patio, which is in the living room, and put a fan blowing IN in front of that window.  That gets pretty good flow and makes it comfortable to watch TV and/or hang in the bedroom.  I have found that the room that the fan points OUT in tends to be a bit warmer than the one with the window where the air is coming in. We don't use the bedroom for much besides sleeping so this doesn't tend to be an issue really.  

I only do the above with the fans at night or once it cools down.  Doing that during the day just draws all the hot air in, not comfortable.  During the day I try and keep the blinds closed and just have fans blowing on me if I get too hot.  Best option during the day is get out and do something somewhere else in the shade.  Our apartment is in the sun ALL DAY and it does get rather hot, especially since they cut down that damn tree that shaded our whole bedroom.  That use to be our escape, no escape in here anymore.  

The second bedroom is our "animal" room and is actually the most well adjusted room. It is surrounded by other apartments, the one adjacent is off set a bit so that bedroom is really in a corner hidden from most sun, except for the morning, but all my reptiles like the heat so it's their little sanctuary.  

I don't really have any other tricks, I drink lots of teas, usually at room temp of a little bit above, or if I have been doing something I drink a glass of iced tea.  Basically stay hydrated.  Looking forward too learning new tricks to keep warm, especially for my two poor black kitties, one obese and one long haired, they don't like the heat so much.  

Got Electronic Waste?

For the locals, from EDCO's site:

Got Electronic Waste?

EDCO now accepts qualified e-waste devices, such as computer monitors and TVs, at the EDCO Recycling Buyback Center, located at 224 S. Las Posas Road in San Marcos (map). Qualified electronic devices are accepted from the public and from State Certified Collectors at no charge. Non-qualified items such as computer drives, keyboards, printers, and other related computer parts are accepted for a small fee.

Residential customers may also call EDCO to collect unwanted electronic devices for a nominal cost through the company's bulky item collection service.

Hair and stainless steel cleaning.

Don't worry I am not using hair to clean stainless steel, I'm just talking about a few different things in one post.

First my hair. I have not used the flax seed recipe again because that nasty sticky-ness on my hair was pretty gross and I am pretty sure it did come from the flax seed wash. My next hair washing I just rinsed with apple cider vinegar(ACV) and after that the nastiness was gone. I think there was just something with the way it interacted with my scalp or something. My roots were not that bad it was at about ear level that just had a ton of goop on it. My hair also got kinda frizzy and HUGE again afterwards. I would brush it and it would be like when I was using conventional shampoo. It's too bad because I really did like the mixture and it was pretty simple and more appealing to me than ACV. I think I might make another batch and use it just on the length of my hair and not near my scalp or roots and see what it does and then use an ACV rinse. I do think the flakiness of my hair was from the peppermint, which was also in my flax seed wash so no more peppermint for my head.

Currently I am cooking up a batch of sugar "wax" to try out on my armpits. My hair grows at a ridiculous rate to have lovely hair free pits I would need to shave twice a day and every time I have been shaving lately I have gotten annoying and a bit painful ingrown hairs so I do not want to shave my pits anymore. I know "sugaring" them will hurt but it will be a burst of pain versus a few days of an annoying ingrown. I wish I could just not shave but I do care too much what people would think of hairy pits. I was first intrigued by sugaring thanks to Crunchy Chicken, and also found a few more places with it. What I am doing right now is boiling up one cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of lemon juice to hardball candy temp (250 F). I am having a bit of difficulties one because I just plain suck at cooking even if it is not food. I already had it boil over on me and two because the small amount I am making my candy thermometer doesn't actually immerse in the liquid. I don't want to make more than I will use especially since this is the first time I am trying it and I don't have much sugar on hand at the moment. So we will see how this goes.

Last night I was determined to clean my stainless steel coffee mug. I was not tasting any nastiness but it was awful to look at. The inside had all sorts of rings from levels of coffee where I apparently took breaks between drinking and the mug has a lid (that I never use) so coffee builds up on the part the rim snaps onto and it was just all around dingy. I had tried a lot, lemon peel with salt, vinegar, baking soda, in all sorts of combinations. It would get the same stuff that soap and sponge would get but still leave all the nasty stains from the coffee and tea. So I googled something like coffee stains in stainless steel mug and got a bunch of ideas. The first one I tried I did not think would work because it seemed too simple. Most were simple but included using products I did not want to use, bleach, oxy clean, other things I stopped using long ago, even though I still have all of them because I stopped right away not when the product was empty. So the first I tried was dishwasher detergent in cup with boiling water and let it sit. I don't currently have a working dishwasher but I do have a few different kinds of detergent under my cabinet. One store brand generic liquid detergent, one little sample pack of cascade that was in the dishwasher when we moved in and a box of Planet brand detergent. I used Planet of course and just tossed enough to coat the bottom and a bit of the sides of the mug and then poured in boiling water. I covered it with a random lid and went to bed in the morning I looked and the mug still had all the stains, I read that someone did this and when they woke up there was a brown film on the top of their mug because it had all come off overnight, I was a bit disappointed but I decided it might have loosened the stuff a little bit so I grab the toothbrush I keep at the sink for cleaning dishes and with barely any pressure all the stains started to come off. I probably could have dumped the soapy water and gotten all the stains off with just a quick rub of the sponge. I could not believe how clean the mug was. It was so shiny and spotless. I was amazed. I am currently trying this on a pot I use to make popcorn that has a bit of a stain from the oil. Just checked and the pot is already clean and shiny. I am going to have so much fun cleaning now. I get really excited about cleaning when I learn new and simple things. Now I just need to figure out how to get the rust stain out of my bathroom sink without using extremely harsh chemicals. I have tried all sorts with that too.

Green(er) Make-up

I stopped wearing make-up a few months ago, I never wore that much. Eye liner and mascara a few times a week, sometimes some powder but I never found one I really liked. I then went looking for "green" make-up and I didn't have much success. About a month ago I went looking again and found some. I still rarely wear make-up, but sometimes it's nice to put it on and well do nothing because I never have anything to really do. The stuff is not perfect but it is better than what I had been using, E.L.F., Maybelline, and stuff like that.

What I got was Organic Wear eyeliner, concealer, and face powder. I really like the eyeliner, its very smooth and nourishing feeling and looks great. The powder is light in feeling and look, my husband actually remarked that it looked really good, as in he couldn't tell I was wearing it and the stuff I had been using apparently you could but he never told me that, men!! The concealer is pretty good, nothing special but works fine. For mascara I went with Lavera, seems a bit messy and gooey when in tube and on brush but goes on well and is very moisturizing. It's not water proof and does tend to smear a bit if you are prone to that but I wear it so infrequent that it's not an issue for me. It really feels like it is moisturizing my lashes instead of making them brittle and hard.

Since I am on the subject I will also share what I use to clean and care for my face. I am currently using mostly Burt's Bees products. To cleanse I regularly use Garden Tomato Complexion Soap with a face brush. I also use on occasion Citrus Facial Scrub, which I LOVE the smell of and it makes my face feel so soft and smooth and the Pore Refining Mask, is more fun than anything else. I don't notice much of a difference after I use this but it does not do any harm so I keep use it. I try to use both those once a week but usually its more like twice a month. I also use Naturally Ageless Intensive Repairing Serum and Herbal Blemish Stick. Both work very well I highly recommend them. I use the Serum on my forehead and my crow's feet, definitely has helped on my fore head and a bit on my eyes. The blemish stick is my best friend. I have always suffered from adult acne and this has helped tremendously. I take the roller ball off and use my finger to apply but other than that it is perfect. For lotion I use Jason's Aloe Vera 70% all over body lotion.

Water and Wine

Check out Low Impact Living's recent article, The Low Down on Water Filters.

Fan of wine check out these two articles on Treehugger:
Which is Greener, Wine Bottle or Box? Depends on the Box.
How does Organic Winemaking Work?

Go Beyond Energy Star to Achieve Maximum Savings

Here is a great article from Low Impact Living on getting maximum savings from your Energy Star appliances.

Green your ways

Top 10 easiest ideas to green your office. Check out Ideal Bite for all sorts of archives on ways to green EVERYTHING in your life, love this one Organic water?

Green tips from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Healthy & Green Living from Care2 has everything you could want. I especially love Green Girl and their archives, they are huge. I use it to find out EVERYTHING. Just use the search and you can find anything and everything green under the sun.

Mr Green Checklist a checklist to green your home room by room

Some other great sites:
Low Impact Living
Green living tips
Co-op America
Greenfeet.com The planet's homestore
Dogwood Alliance
Shopper's Guide
Carbon Conscious Consumer
Seafood Selector from Environmental Defense Fund
Green is Sexy
Earth 911 recycling info for practically everything you own
Gaiam Green Living, Yoga, Fitness, and Organic Products
Organic Milk score card
Big Green Purse
Lets Go Green


Hate junk mail, try these resources:
GreenDimes
DMA Choice I used this and it has made an enormous difference.
Stop the Junk Mail Monster


Buy yourself some reusable tote bags instead of using plastic grocery bags, I use and LOVE my Whole Food bags, sturdy and HUGE. If you are handy maybe you should try and make your own out of old T-Shirts. T-Shirt tote bags. But if you do use plastic bags recycle them, although a lot of places just "pretend" to recycle them and if you don't recycle them try this:
Fusing Plastic Bags
Sewable Fabric from Plastic Bags



Don't to forget to sign up for the newsletters/tips that some of the sites offer.

How to go green. . . EVERYWHERE

Check out TreeHugger's Go Green Guides. They cover pretty much everything and range from the simple to the overly extravagant, hehe! But there are some good tips check out the ones that interest you.

TechnoTrash, some tips

As you may or may not be aware it is illegal in some areas and bad for the environment in general to dispose of any electornic waste in the regular trash pick up.

As you are probably also aware it is almost more difficult to figure out where to properly dispose of electronic items.

Here are some option for tech recycling.

GreenDisk seems to be a pretty cool service and fairly easy.

Also check out your local Office Depot for tech recycling, they have three different size boxes and all the stuff you can fit in one is recycled for the price of the box.

The Big Green Box is much like what Office Depot offers but they seem to specialize in batterties and small handheld devices.

ACT recycles videocassettes and computer disks through an org that provides jobs to disabled people.

At The Rechargable Battery Recycling Corporation you can enter your zip code and get a list of close places to recycle your batteries.

I am sure there are plenty of other resources, usually when you buy a new electornic gadget you are given an option to recyle what it is replacing. I know T-Mobile provides me with a free recycling envelope for my old phone when i get a new one and Dell supplies me with a free recylcling envelope for my old printer cartridges when I get a new one.

Energy, Sun, Bugs, and more . . .

Energy saving tips from Co-op America they have an awesome light switch template you can apply to your light switches to help you remember to turn them off.

Safe Sunscreen and Bug Repellants and
Natural, Organic, Biodynamic–What's the Difference?
both from Low Impact Living

Safe Sunscreens from Sierra Club's The Green Life

CFL’s and Mercury and Proper CFL disposal

CFLs and Mercury

CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, so they cannot be thrown out in the trash. However, the mercury in CFLs represents a much less significant environmental hazard than incandescent bulbs because CFLs require much less electricity, and more than half of our nation's electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants—the largest U.S. source of mercury emissions.

In scientific words, the average coal-fired power plant emits only 3.2 milligrams of mercury for each CFL running six hours per day for five years, but emits nearly 15 milligrams of mercury for an incandescent bulb running the same amount of time, according to The Union of Concerned Scientists research. The difference far exceeds the approximately five milligrams present inside a CFL. Properly disposing of CFLs ensures the mercury in them remains contained.

Proper CFL disposal

What do you do with cfl's that you no longer can use since you are not suppose to put them in the regular garbage, Home Depot now has drop offs for proper disposal of CFL bulbs. Info about Home Depot's in store bulb recycling.

Now its easy to do the right thing. So if you have not switched do it, the upfront cost may be more than incandescent bulbs but the money you will save on not having to replace them and lower energy bills will quickly offset the cost. If you are worried about the whole mercury thing, it seems to be overreacted by a lot.

If the twisty light thing is what is stopping you then get yourself to a big hardware store, I frequent Lowe's but Home Depot has the same products. They have CFL's in all shapes and sizes now. Even some in color. I have even seen teardrop CFL's for use in chandeliers.

If you have used a CFL or two and were turned off by the difference in type of light that they give off, try switching to a lower watt, basically a 26 watt CFL is about equal to a 100 watt incandescent. Some people complain about the type of light, some feel its too "blue". There are many new CFL's that say softer light or things like that on them so the transition from incandescents will be easier on you eyes.

Batteries

Green Living Tips has a great article on Disposable vs. rechargeable batteries. Included in the article are recycling tips too. Great article check it out.