Unfuck Your Habitat

nina-in-technicolor:

Hey UfYH, I know this isn’t really a household-cleaning thing, but you adore vinegar so I thought you might like it (and your readers in areas with fire ants should LOVE it): Vinegar and pennies are a cure for fire ant stings!

No shitting: soak a piece of cotton (I like cotton makeup remover pads for this, but cotton balls work too) in vinegar, and cut a piece out—a tiny square will do. Tape it to the bite underneath a copper penny. Make sure you’re using a penny you can stand to lose (by which I mean a common modern issue right out of your pocket will work fine—there’s no need to hunt down a coin from a rare decade for the copper in it), because by the time you’re done, it’s going to have some SERIOUS verdigris and look downright disgusting. I tend to use duct tape for this, because the vinegar will run, but any heavy tape (packing tape, masking tape) will work (scotch tape/sellotape will not).

Now forget about it.

In 6-8 hours, take off the penny. The bite and the area around it will be green from the tarnish the vinegar has created on the penny—but don’t wash it off. That verdigris is both blocking the itch because it’s saturated with vinegar, and leeching out the fire ant venom. Give it another 12-24 hours, then wash it off. The bite should be mostly gone.

And I thought of this because I stepped in a fire ant nest this morning, and as I was applying vinegar to a makeup pad I went “I bet UfYH would love this—and you know what I really need to get back to unfucking the kitchen” (which went by the wayside because of my work hours, but is now getting done at 3am, which is roughly 9:30pm Ninalyn Standard Time). So yes, vinegar on my ankle is unfucking my fire ant bite, which is quite helpful while I unfuck the mess I’ve fucked up my lovely clean counter into in the last couple of days.

… . oh, and I washed my dishes while making dinner tonight as part of that unfucking. Have I perchance earned a House gif? (or any gif, really, but I’m in a House mood)