Fleas - The Waiting Game

The fleas are still here. They're very hearty little buggers (much to my chagrin). The toll it was taking on the dog was just too much.

I started waking up with more and more flea bites in the morning. Worst of all - I found fleas in my daughters hair once after she rolled around on the floor playing. I felt like I was the worst worst house-keeper and that I had my family living in some flea infested hovel (my mother didn't help me feel any better about all of this either.)

My father bought a flea spray to be applied to the dog pretty much every day, we bought the dog a flea collar, we bombed our house twice, and then we had to give the dog a flea bath. Once again we will have to wait.

I found a pin talking about an at home spray you can make using essential oils, but essential oils run around $10 - 20 per bottle at my local health food store and the mix calls for quite a few. I just couldn't afford it.

Now you may be thinking, "with all that was purchased, surely you could have afforded the natural solutions." We really don't have a lot of money, and I really didn't expect this flea problem to go this far. Maybe I'll slowly purchase the necessary essential oils to create the natural flea spray but for the moment I have a lot of other things on my plate.

It seems that a kitten our daughter was playing with at my mother-in-laws house was patient zero. I heard a lot of my brother-in-laws friends found themselves victims of a flea infestation. It just seems my own household was the one that suffered to this extreme degree.

One of the friends said that his mother suggested banana peels. He he said he bought some bananas and left the peels in the corners of a few of the rooms and the fleas were gone in days. He also made sure to point out he's never home so they may have just starved to death.

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - Dishwashing detergent (Part II)

Unhappy with the way my last attempt at home-made dish-washing detergent was going I decided to try another recipe.

Today's pin-test come from the info here via the this pin.

The biggest change between my last dish-washing detergent and the one I tried today is the addition of lemi-shine and kosher salt. Feeling a bit hopeless at this whole home-made cleaning supplies thing I made only as much as this recipe called for rather than a large batch like I previously had. I'm glad I did.

Today's results were again disheartening. Upon opening my dishwasher and hoping to be removing my sparkling clean dishes I was met with that same chalky residue. At this point this particular load of dishes had gone through at least three times. I ran it once more, on heavy duty, with just water.

Residue. Frak.

Dealing With Fleas The Chemical-Free Way

One of many unfortunate facts of life is that dogs. get. fleas. And this year my dog got them while we were at my in-laws farm. My daughters "house kitten" (a kitten that is hers but only lives at grandma's house) had fleas and the very moment my husband noticed them I knew our dog was doomed.

We became suspicious that she had fleas but had seen no immediate evidence so I tried two quick tests to find out if we did in fact have fleas.

1) A plate of syrup.
          Place a plate of syrup out in the floor over night. When you wake up - check it for fleas.
                          I think I may have even done this twice and not found any fleas.
2) Warm soapy water.
         The fleas are supposed to be attracted to the heat, jump into the soapy water, and die.
                          The article I read suggested that I place the dish of water under a lamp to keep it warm and enticing for the fleas. I used the lights for my light box. In the morning there were no fleas.

Eventually the fleas made their obvious appearance. The dog, thankfully, wasn't covered with them but seemed to have three or four that we could easily spot on her behind.

We tried the standard attack of using medication, but it didn't work (we tried three different applications). Months later we still had them. One night I sat eating carrots and hummus when I looked down to see a flea had jumped into my cold hummus and died. I was fed up.

Care 2 Make A Difference mentioned something I could try to fight the fleas.

Again, I turn to borax in my time of need. I put a very small amount into a measuring cup and sprinkled a bit on the areas my dog spends the majority of her time in the hope that the release of boric acid would kill any remaining fleas.

The Care 2 Make A Difference post doesn't say how long you should leave the borax on the carpet so after a super quick Google search I had my answer.

I could barely get the dog out of my way to put down the borax in the first place so it was no surprise that after it was down she went back to the area I was most worried about so I didn't bother using a broom to push the borax down into the carpet.

Because we have a toddler that likes to drop food on the carpet only to pick it back up and put it back in her mouth if you're not looking, I was nervous about letting the borax sit too long. We vacuumed it up after 17.5 hours.

We were left to play the wait-and-see game.

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - The Toilet (Take II)

As I mentioned in my previous post, the bathroom closest to my bedroom is used with enough frequency that leaving it with borax in it all night isn't much of an option.

Today's pin-test comes from the info here via this pin.

The before

15 minutes later

After scrubbing

The consensus: I was better off letting borax sit all night in the toilet