I was surprised to be entrusted with this, but they see me taking care of plants outdoors, so assumed I’d know how to attend to them indoors. Those are two totally different beasts, but last Winter I practiced taking care of some indoors and for the most part was successful.

My neighbors went to visit their family for a while in a much cooler climate. Before they left, he handed me a key to his house and asked if I’d water their indoor plants once a week. I happily obliged and walked over this week to see what I was in for. They don’t have many plants, so this would be easy, but they did have an enormous number of flies setting up camp in their absence.

They need to know my trick.

And it’s not even my trick, it was my neighbor, Mr. M, who taught me about it. I noticed he had a zip lock baggie half filled with water hanging in front of each door leading outside. I asked him why and he told me it’s supposed to keep flies from coming in your house whenever you open the door. We both have dogs, so our back doors are like revolving doors during the day and a fly would come in every time I opened my door, so I was more than ready to try it.

I filled a baggie half full of water and hung it above my back door from the outside with a thumb tack. It took a couple of days for it to work, but once it did, I haven’t had a fly come in my back door since!

When my neighbors return, they’ll wonder why there’s a bag of water hanging above their back door, but they will also have no more flies.

Feature photo gifted to me by Marli Thibodeau.