Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy No Routine = More Food Waste {Food Waste Friday August 17}

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No Routine = More Food Waste {Food Waste Friday August 17}

Posted: 16 Aug 2012 06:26 PM PDT

One of my biggest pet peeves is throwing away food. I could kick myself every time I dump food down the drain or in the trash: it’s just a complete and total waste! And I hate waste. Which is why I am so thrilled to link up to The Frugal Girl on her weekly feature where she posts a picture of all the food she had to throw away for the week, and invites other bloggers to do the same. The idea is to feel some accountability – who wants to admit they threw away all that money to the whole world? – to help you avoid throwing away food in the future.

Ugh, this week was bad. In the picture above, you see:

a black banana
a serving of week-old mashed potatoes
a slice of pizza
and a container of cooked chicken that was shoved all the way to the back of the fridge. Ugh.

What you don’t see, but was also thrown away:

a bag of mixed greens
a whole bag of carrots.

Sad, sad. It was really bad this week. My excuse is that we are coming off a week-long staycation, and most of the food went bad during that time. We were out of our normal routine and ate on the fly a lot more, so waste was the inevitable result.

Here’s to a better week next week.

In the meantime, I have an excellent use for citrus peels that you may never have considered before.

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Get Rid of Ants Quickly, Easily and Naturally

Posted: 16 Aug 2012 06:03 PM PDT

Just ask my husband, or anyone who knows me, really. I HATE BUGS. Now, as long as they stay outside where God put them, I am happy to let them live in peace. But the very second they encroach on my territory (or, heaven forbid, my person!), war is declared by virtue of their trespass.

Unfortunately, those nasty little boogers seem to require nasty chemical weapons when engaging in warfare. They certainly make for a hardy army and a worthy foe! And despite my efforts to create a non-toxic space inside my home… I have to admit I am willing to resort to chemical warfare when it comes to bugs.

BUT! (she says with a triumphant brandish of her coffee grinder) BUT! I have found a weapon that brings ants to their knees, begging for mercy; only to be haughtily ignored, and left to go slinking off into the dirt. Where they belong. And the citizens rejoice!

This weapon of which I speak contains no chemicals, and is, in fact, entirely natural.

What’s more, this weapon consists of ingredients one would often otherwise throw away, and is therefore quite thrifty and frugal as well.

The weapon? Dried orange peel. Dried orange peel, and a little effort on your part, will make the ants go running for their hills. Get rid of ants naturally with hardly any trouble at all!

And I know it’s true because I tried it. Let me tell you how it all went down:

We have ants every year in our apartment; it’s kind of like clockwork. And typically, what happens is the apartment puts us on a list and calls in the contracted pest removal company, which comes in and squirts around some kind of odor-free “safe” chemical that makes the ants disappear for the season.

This year, the ants came really late (well into the summer, actually), and I only saw a few here and there. I killed them and that was that. One at a time I can handle. Well, apparently, someone forgot to spread the word that this dwelling is DEATH to ants, because suddenly -almost overnight – I had armies of ants crawling through the cracks in my window and traipsing through my dining room. My dining room! Where we eat!

AND those nasty little creatures dared to walk all over my curtains, too. We put in a call to the office, as usual, but it turns out there were quite a few other people on the list and there was no telling when the exterminator would make it our way. The situation was getting quite desperate. I couldn’t even sit at the computer without having to squash ants first. Dis. Gust. Ing.

So I did what any reasonable member of 21st century society does, and I googled how to kill ants naturally. I read a lot of different suggestions, but one that jumped out at me was one little-known fact (OK, at least I didn’t know it) that ants despise the smell of citrus.

Huh. Who knew?! Those tough little warriors have sensitive olfactory glands. I had found their Achilles heel!

I applied the treatment of dried citrus to the window (where they were entering) and went about my business. I’m not kidding, within a day or two, the ants were almost completely gone. A few hardy ant-souls would occasionally wander through… but would humorously veer away from the citrus whenever they got a little too close. After a few days, I didn’t see another ant on the window sill or anywhere in the dining room.

And then… silly me! I got kind of tired of the citrus peels decorating my dining room window sill, so I vacuumed them up. Dumb move. The ants came back en force! I applied the citrus peels again, and they disappeared even faster the second time.

I have to admit, I was skeptical at first. Honestly, how many natural remedies for this kind of thing really and truly work well? And citrus? It seemed like such a lame weapon. One I would have totally overlooked if it weren’t for the experts on the internet.

So. If you have ants invading your territory, I have a great strategy for you. Follow it closely, and see if those ants don’t retreat faster than you can say, “Charge!”.

Kill as many of the visible ants as you can. I used my multi-purpose cleaning spray, which is made of vinegar, water, and orange essential oil. I sprayed it on the ants and it killed them on contact and then I wiped them up. (Bonus! I cleaned up my dining room walls and windowsill at the same time!)
Clean every nearby surface so that no crumbs or remnants of food remain anywhere. Vacuum carefully.
Sprinkle ground dried orange peel (See a tutorial for dried orange zest here) all around the cracks and holes where the ants come in. Windows are popular points of entry!
Keep the area as clean as possible (Hello? A dining room where a toddler and a pre-schooler eat all their meals? It’s like ant heaven! But I do my best.)
You will have to keep the orange peel up indefinitely, UNLESS you take a step further and track the ants back to their home. Then you’re gonna have to get mean and nasty and blow up their home (Find some great suggestions about killing ant hills without pesticides here).
Ahhhhhhh… relax in your now ant-free home.

What’s your favorite non-toxic ant killer?

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