DIY - Fruit flies and lice

Here are a few little "homemade" things I have discovered that really work!

After a recent scare with head lice (my young sister in law got them from camp), we found something to be quite effective...

The Original Listerine

If infected with lice wash hair, towel dry and completely saturate hair with original listerine. Put a shower cap on and keep on hair for 2 - 4 hours. When done, brush dead lice out of hair and pick all the nits out (continually, until all gone) This can be done several times until you are sure it is under control. Of course you need to wash everything and spray couches etc, with a lice killing solution (not listerine).

As a preventative, spray original listerine in hair with a spray bottle or use as conditioner but don't rinse out. It smells when hair is wet, but is orderless when it dries. This can be done on little kids, and it really seemed to work, as we didn't catch them. Apparently if you hear of head lice going around you can do this with the kids at each bath and they won't catch them... something to do with the alcohol in it, I think.

*NOTE: Meghan's case was not severe, so perhaps if you are crawling with lice it would be less effective. There are testimonies online that it works even on bad cases, but I can't speak to that.

Another thing I discovered around Christmas is how to get rid of fruit flies. We had what seemed like an infestation of them here last winter, and I read up online of some easy ways to get rid of them. This one I found to be the most effective.

Put some apple cider vinegar in a bottle. Create a funnel with a piece of paper and put it in the opening of the bottle. They fly in there, and get trapped and eventually drown. There are some reports that adding a drop of dishwashing detergent to the vinegar can be helpful, but I haven't noticed a difference. This is also quick, we literally caught hundreds of them in a day. Now whenever I notice a few flying around, I pull out my trusty old baby bottle and they are gone, usually within hours.