Happy happy homemaking

Along with baking many batches of cookies today for our upcoming house party (everyone in apartment building is involved and each apartment invites 10 friends), I considered cleaning the apartment, had friendly conversations with the neighbors, went grocery shopping, and murdered at least 30 creatures.

I also murdered at least 50 creatures yesterday. And you thought I was such a nice person...

We have an ongoing fruit-fly problem. Granted, I have fruit lying around and there certainly are enough breadcrumbs and other savory items around all calling out to the little drosophila. But...that's how I want my kitchen to be. (Well, ok, I could do without some of the crumbs - but I like having fruit and tomatoes in bowls.)

Last week I walked around like a zombie with my hand-held dust buster. Getting dressed - ZAP!, cooking - ZAP!, cleaning - ZAP!, working on presentations, CV, etc. - ZAP ZAP ZAP! What's really really rewarding - maybe sort of like scrubbing your face or brushing your teeth or many other personal hygiene tasks that we won't talk about here - is watching the transparent dust and dirt holder fill up with the little annoying fruit vampires. Before the dust buster I had been slapping them with a rolled up notebook - but then I had to scrub the wall/mirror/window to remove their corpses every time I did that. At some point during wall scrubbing and subsequently dust busting - I realized how much TIME I was wasting on the continuous hunt.

So I googled "getting rid of fruit flies" or some such term and was happy to learn that I had everything at hand to get rid of fruit flies passively. Namely: One glass, a small amount of alcohol - preferably wine, one sheet of paper, a bit of tape.

See the contraption (and the success!) right here. (I know, you're all going "ick!" but some days...well...this is really the most exciting thing to blog about.) Passive murder. I'm responsible. The smell of the alcohol draws them in and then they can't figure out how to get back out through the funnel. They fly around until they die from exhaustion and drop into the liquid below.

I'm hoping when it gets colder that they will mostly die off anyway...