Revenge of the Fruit Flies

You know you're a healthy eater when...no matter what you do you can't seem to get rid of the fruit flies (of course, due to an over-abundance of healthy foods lying around).

I've cleaned the kitchen, become a dictator of pop can and milk jug-rinsing, and insisted on the "no dirty dishes left overnight" rule, but alas, I cannot seem to find the origination of that tiny pestering colony. Let's just chalk it up to the climate being hot and humid at the moment and the bananas being in high demand by a toddling almost-two-year-old. Ah well, at least this is a relatively good problem to have.

The best way to get rid of fruit flies is to get rid of their source of food. I've been heaving boxes of nonperishables left and right (admittedly with some guilt), wiping down the countertops and taking out the garbage religiously. We'll see how long it takes before I stop seeing anymore of those little boogers.

In the meantime, this is a great excuse to get my hubby in the habit of cleaning up after himself and not letting the dishes pile up, because honey, otherwise your morning cereal will start to have larvae mixed in. There are some bonuses to having fruit flies. They are a clear indication to him that we do indeed need to keep a cleaner house.

I have some crazed memories from when we were kids and mom woke us up at three in the morning because she noticed ants in the kitchen. We were forced to help her scour and scald the life out of the kitchen until it was clean enough for her to be able to sleep. To this day, I have nightmares about bug infestations in the confines of what is supposed to be a place of refuge, our home. As though, if we let one juice spill go untouched, our house will fall to the ground under the weight of nests and hives.

Of course, there has to be a medium between the obsessive-compulsive and completely lax, so I'm not going to freak out, but I'm not going to let the baby's high chair accumulate an abundance of crumbs either.