Did you know that you can save money and be green by using the internet to look up stuff?  (Yeah, I thought you might know that)  But!  I’m excited to share three problems I recently solved thanks to the wisdom of the masses.

Problem #1: My clothes smell like mildew.

During the humid days of summer, my closet got a mite fester-y.  My unworn long-sleeved shirts and heavy pants stank after sitting dormant for months, and I had to wash everything.  After doing a little Googling, the consensus was that cedar is the wood to use to keep mildew at bay.  I sprang $6 to get a bag of chips.  The problem?  How do I use cedar chips in the closet?

The solution: I revived that old, stretched out bathing suit I was going to toss.  (Note: if you want a suit that will last through chlorine and sun, this competitive swimmer highly recommends polyester blends.)  I cut my worn suit into ribbons, and stapled the ribbons to the cedar chips, attached them to hangers, and spread them through the closet.

Problem #2: My mom’s oven is broken.

My folks only have an oven because it came with the house.  Okay, sometimes they use it to re-heat pizza, and I used it to make Christmas dinner.  On a recent visit my mom was distraught because the electronic control panel was reading out “F7” and the oven wouldn’t heat.  The repairman said they had to spend $700 to get a new panel, and charged them $100 to say that.  The old panel would have to be trashed.  My folks thought about just getting a new oven completely, maybe one like mine, circa the year of my birth, with no electronic parts or even a glass door to slow down the works.

The solution: I suggested they look up the problem on “The Google.”  I found to this site, where we learned with a little effort, we could fix the problem ourselves.  Twenty minutes and one business card in a ribbon cable later, and we fixed it!  (If you read the comments section of the fix-it post, you can probably easily tell which one was my mother’s.)

Problem #3: Where the h-e-double hockey sticks did these damn fruit flies come from?

Living alone, my garbage tends to pile up slowly, and it can get rank with all the cat food containers and leftover bits of fruits and vegetables.  The other day, all that stank bred me a collection of dozens of fruit flies.  How to get rid of pests?  Spraying chemicals feels out of the question.

Love my little polka-dot juice glasses / death traps.

The solution: The fine ladies and gentlemen of the internet suggested that (after cleaning the kitchen to rid it of smells) I put out a glass of half vinegar, half water to attract the flies, with added dish detergent to break the surface tension of the water so the little guys drown when they try to drink the vinegar.  For scientific purposes, I put out both a glass of balsamic vinegar and red cider vinegar.  The results?  As I tweeted yesterday, you catch more flies with balsamic.  As of this morning, I have yet to see a fruit fly in my kitchen that isn’t down my drain.  The cost?  Pennies.  The environmental impact?  Negligible. Side effects?  The kitchen smelled like salad this morning.