Unwanted House Guests: Gnats

At one point or another we all have to deal with the headache of a pest known as gnats, or fruit flies. They are attracted to any sweet foods or food particles that might be around. It seems like one day you have a few gnats, then they get the word out to the rest of them, and you spend the next week or so trying get rid of all of your uninvited house guests. Trying to kill them with a fly swatter or something will get a few, but more will hatch before you get all of them. You need to treat not only the ones that are flying around your house, but also where they might have laid eggs. Here are a couple different ways you can get rid of all of them.

First off, let's take care of the fully grown gnats. I know of two projects that you could try to take care of them. One project is to take a 2 or 3 liter soda bottle, vinegar, sugar, and water. Cut the top off of the bottle about 2 inches down from the top and set it aside. Put 1/2 cup each of vinegar and white sugar in the bottle and fill it half way with water. Make sure it doesn't touch the top when you take the cap off, invert it and put it in the top of the bottle. (If it falls into the bottle, you can use duct tape to hold it up.) Set these traps in rooms where you notice the gnats and they will be drawn to it because of the sweetness of the sugar and the odor of the vinegar.

There are a couple of variations to this that might suit your needs better. If you don't have a large bottle, you can always do the same thing with a smaller bottle. You will want to reduce your sugar and vinegar to 1 to 2 tablespoons of each though. This option is much more easily concealed if you don't want to broadcast that you have gnats to everyone that comes in your home.

Another variation is to use a cup, mason jar, or even a bowl instead of the soda bottle. Use the same amounts of sugar, vinegar, and water in your container, only in place of the bottle top, use plastic wrap. cut a piece of plastic wrap big enough to completely cover the opening of your container, use a rubber band, hair tie, scotch (or other kind) tape, or string of some sort to secure the plastic wrap and make sure the gnats don't get back out once they are in the jar. Once you have secured the plastic wrap, use a knife to make about half a dozen small punctures in the plastic wrap that are just big enough that the gnats can crawl in, but not back out. (This may take some perfecting, but it makes all the difference.)

Within a couple hours you will begin to notice some little gnats crawling around inside the container or floating in the water mixture. Change it out every couple of days to keep it fresh, and leave it out until you don't notice any more gnats flying around.

To treat the areas where the gnats are most likely laying their eggs, you could wipe down all of your food surfaces with either vinegar or bleach. Also make sure to sweep up any crumbs and food particles every day. There are two treatments that I know of to treat your sink drains. Two factors that will determine which one is best for you are the smell and which products you have. First remedy is to pour some baking soda down your drains followed by a cup of vinegar poured slowly afterward. If you still have baking soda in the drain that hasn't dissolved, you can always add more vinegar. The other option is to pour one cup of bleach slowly down the drain. Either option you use, don't use the drain for at least 2 hours afterward.

Gnats are drawn to fresh foods, so if you like to keep fresh food out in your kitchen, such as bananas or other fruits or even bread, make sure that you rinse any fruits or vegetables thoroughly before setting them out and put the food in the fridge or toss it out long before it starts to go bad, this will deter the gnats from coming back. These are some old fashioned remedies for pesky gnats that are tried and true.

Hallway Gallery

            So, this weekend I had a burst of energy and wanted to do something in my house and of the laundry list of questions and things on my To Do list, I settled on this question: What do you do with an odd little pooka in your house? Decorate it! Add some interest and give it a visual function. I have an odd hallway in my house that is all of five feet long. One side has a doorway and the other just has a light switch. It also has a light that didn't really seem to have a purpose, and I felt that I needed to give it one. So I decided to hang a small gallery.

If you want to achieve a look similar to what I have done, take two frames that are square and three that are rectangular. They don't have to be collage frames like the ones I have used. You could make it larger or smaller, use square frames that are either hold a collage or a single photo, or you could go a step further and use pieces of art. The main thing that you are trying to achieve is visual interest and balance. 

If you can, plan out your layout on paper before hanging any frames on the wall, this is to minimize the amount of holes you put in the walls. If you aren’t able to lay it out on paper, you can lay it out on the floor and transfer it to the wall the same way. This also allows for you to try out different groupings or even frames without damaging your walls.

Here is a picture of the layout that I did on paper. Knowing that there is a six inch gap between all of the frames and that I wanted to have the bottom of the grouping set at the top of the light switch, I mainly used the diagram as a visual frame of reference.

When hanging your frames, it’s best to begin with the bottom one since it has a reference point. Measure from the bottom of the frame to where the hanger is. On the wall, find your center line and use either tape or sticky notes to mark it on your wall. (Though it is easier to just mark on the wall and it will generally be covered by your frames, if you do decide to change it down the road at some point, the marks don’t clean off the wall very well…) Use your reference point to set the bottom of your frame; then along the center line that you already marked, use the measurement for the hanger and mark where to put your nail with your tape or sticky note. From this point you can either use your measurements for the gaps and hangers that you included in your drawing (or floor layout) and put the gallery on the wall with your markers, or you can measure as you go (which is what I did). And there you have it, a simple, balanced, and visually appealing gallery for your home.

Shelf Project From Martha Stewart

What is the one thing in your home that even if it appears that you have enough of it, it never really is enough? Give up? STORAGE! I thought that the reason that my old house was so cluttered was because we didn’t have enough space for everything. Now we have more than enough space, but still not really any storage solutions. Because of this, I have been scouring the interwebs for ideas on how to combat the war against lacking storage.

Surprisingly, there are tons of ideas and DIY sites and tutorials and videos and so much more. The catch is: it all costs money! Some costs more than others, but it all costs money. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of money. So I am rather limited on how opulent, how accessorized, and how high of quality I can go with it. 

Above the door shelf idea, taken from MarthaStewart.com.

The first project that really caught my eye was this idea for a shelf above the door that I have seen in different books, but it was usually accompanied by shelves on either side of it. In this picture taken from MarthaStewart.com, the shelf is by itself above the door, and because it is organized and clean looking, it looks like it was supposed to be there; not like someone ran out of room and decided to put a shelf above a door... The fact that the accessories and containers are all in neutral, complimentary colors helps the eye travel over the display in its entirety, and take in the whole display without focusing on one specific thing. If you were to put different colors together in such a small space it would create a cluttered and jarring effect and visually it would take up more space than it really does. After a while it will become a nuisance and you would probably either stop using it, or even take it down.

Project Ideas!!!!

Since I have all sorts of ideas for decorating and organizing my home (as well as every other home I walk into... Bad habit.) I am starting a new little section in my blog and am going to try to get all of my ideas down somewhere so that if I actually use any of them, I don't have to hunt for them. Plus, you can use them whenever you want as well. (I wonder... If you use the designs that I post on here, could I claim that as a charitable donation for taxes? Food for thought I suppose...)

For my first few blogs I will be focusing on organization. I am still trying to figure out how to organize all of our stuff in the new house and fill in the furniture gaps, but all of that takes money and the move itself pretty much tapped us out; therefore, anything that I do from here on out is on a very strict budget. I have seen a lot of great projects that I am going to try to incorporate into my designs, so wish me luck that it works the way it seems like it would in my head.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve on the ideas, or ways to make it more affordable, etc., I really encourage you to leave comments below.