Here is a tidbit of information I picked up a few weeks ago and have been wanting to test out. I was in a first aid class when some of the women were talking about home remedies for things. One woman mentioned that a small amount of bleach on a q-tip applied to a mosquito bite will keep it from whelping and itching. This had me very excited since we get bitten a lot by mosquitoes.

I didn’t want to use it on my daughter since I wasn’t sure what it might feel like. So the other evening I was outside and was bitten a few times. Finally I could test this old wives tale out. I dipped a q-tip in bleach and applied it to one of the bites. At first it didn’t feel any different. I wasn’t sure if I got the right area since it hadn’t whelped up yet. I reapplied some bleach with a q-tip. That got the spot. The bite never did whelp up and instantly the itch went away. I applied it to the other bite after that since I had wanted to see when my bleach bite stopped itching that my other bite still itched.

Although I probably will not use it on the girl, at least I have a way to stop mosquito bites from itching. I’ll continue to use Benadryl for my kid and I will use a q-tip dipped in bleach. It may sound odd, but it works pretty well for me.

Summer is here and so that means there are mosquitoes everywhere. Mosquitoes seem to love us, so we always have a problem with these pesky insects. While I’ve tried remedies before, this year I’ve decided to plant flowers that mosquitoes do not really enjoy. One of those flowers is apparently Marigolds.

I’ve never really liked Marigolds. They really don’t have a nice smell and the yellow flower always reminds me of a Homecoming corsage. But if they deter mosquitoes, then I’m willing to put that aside and give them a try. Best of all, Marigolds are just $1. I have already bought five and plan to buy more. They will be placed all around our deck as well as the kid’s play set. It will be field of yellow but hopefully it will be a mosquito-free zone.

On more than one occasion, I’ve been given the adivce to use hot water to make ice because it freezes faster than cold water.  I’m not sure of the reasoning but I would believe it might have to do with energy. Maybe that the hot water uses more energy so it freezes faster?

The tray on the right is the cold water and the tray on the left is the hot water. I’m guessing it takes a few hours to make ice, so to see how well hot water freezes as compared to cold water, I checked on both ice trays after about an hour 15 minutes. (I was going to check back after an hour but got distracted by the cat who caught a baby bunny! Bunny is safe)

After one hour I picked up both trays and have to say that it seemed the cold water was freezing faster. I’m not sure if that was because it was closest to the freezer wall or if cold water does freeze faster.

After three hours. I can now see solid ice in each tray. The tray with the hot water has six solid ice cubes while the tray with the cold water has four. I really thought there would be more from the cold water since it seemed after the first hour that it was more frozen. But it looks like the hot water caught up and surpassed it.

So by using hot water you may have more ice cubes faster. As far as clearer ice, I can’t see any difference between the two.

I have to admit that I love home remedies. The crazier the better. Some of these get passed down and become old wives tales. You know what I’m talking about. How Grandma swears that rubbing a potato and burying it in the backyard under a full moon will get rid of warts. Or have you ever been given the advice feed a cold, starve a fever?

What I plan to do is put some of these old wives’ tale to the test as they pertain to the household. Think of it as Mythbusters but from a housewife perspective.

My first experiment will be around the tale that hot water freezes faster than cold water when making ice cubes. I tried this earlier but want to do it again to freeze both the hot and cold water at the same time. My husband says no that it won’t freeze faster but will freeze clearer. I guess I will be looking for 2 things when I conduct this experiment later today.

Last month, I wrote about some advice I read that Listerine kills mosquitoes only to go to Snopes and find it to be false, or at least according to them. After doing some more digging on the subject for my new blog that Listerine may in fact might work to kill mosquitoes.

Apparently what works with Listerine or even the generic brand is the ingredient Eucalyptol. It’s an active ingredient in Listerine(.092%), and that has been proven to work well to kill both mosquitoes and their larvae. There were a few journal articles, and all I could read was the summary or pay $30 to read the entire thing. But from the summary you could tell that there was proof that it help curve the mosquito population.

I found on Amazon a repellent spray – Repel Lemon Eucalyptus. You can buy Eucalyptus oil, so in theory, you could make your own mosquito repellent that is a higher percentage of the ingredient that is suppose to work on them. It’s definitely something I will try this summer as we have a terrible mosquito problem.

What’s the craziest home remedy you’ve heard? I’ve heard many over the years and have even tried some. I remember changing my soap to to a gentler brand because I heard it was an affective acne treatment. That might not be that strange, but some advice I’ve been given I’m not sure I follow the logic.

My mother-in-law always said if you have a wart to cut a potato in half. Rub it over the wart and then bury the potato in the backyard under a full moon. Your wart would then go away. I guess maybe the starch does something to the wart and maybe the rest is just to give you something to do while you wait for your wart to go away!

When I first read this tidbit of advice on how to get rid of mosquitoes, I have to admit I was excited since I was sure I probably had some Listerine in the bathroom. Take Listerine and put it in a spray bottle. Then spray around where mosquitoes reside. Voila! No more mosquitoes!

Since I wanted a tad bit more information, I googled it and wouldn’t you know the first link is to Snopes. Snopes is the place to learn to truth about urban legends, old wives tales, and in general Internet rumors. Apparently it does work and will kill the mosquitoes it is directly sprayed on but says “false” to the claim that it will help repel mosquitoes.

I may try it anyway. I mean we already use Listerine, so all I need is a spray bottle. If it knocks out even 10% of the local mosquito population, then I’ll be happy.

Since my original post, I have used the generic form of Listerine around our front porch to see if it deters mosquitoes. The smell seems to last for about a day and that’s about how long there seems to be a decrease in mosquitoes. It could be just my imagination but definitely seems we are bitten less after spraying the mouth wash around our home.

Update:

I’ve a follow up to this post that you can find here where I talk about why Listerine is suppose to work on mosquitoes.

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