A couple of years ago in the fall, I started having this problem with flies in my house. It had gotten cold outside and they all wanted to come in where it was warm.

I tried swatting them but they came back. Every day there would be more and more.

My competitive alpha male lizard brain kicked in. So I got my Shop Vac out of the garage and started going after them. "Maybe if I just vacuum them all up, I can get rid of them with brute force."

I'd walk in the room in the morning and they'd be sitting there the next morning, more of 'em.

I bought fly traps but more kept coming.

Then I bought fly paper and put it all over the house. I started getting headaches and I realized, uh, all that flypaper is toxic and probably NOT GOOD for anybody.

As embarrassing as it is to admit this, it wasn't until this point that I finally said to myself, "Maybe I am only trying to solve this problem at a surface level. What if I got to the ROOT of this problem?"

"So... where are all these flies coming from anyway?"

The next day, I found it: a rotting bag of potatoes in the back of the pantry, underneath something where I had not bothered to look.

Every day that stinkin' bag of potatoes was breeding more flies.

My friend, I could have had 100 fly strips, 3 shop vacs and armed myself with military style fly swatters, and the flies would have kept coming back until that bag of potatoes turned to dust.

I threw away the potatoes and the flies were all gone in 2 days.

So my question for you is:

WHAT SIMPLE, STUPID PROBLEM ARE YOU TRYING TO BAND-AID UP WITH FLYSWATTERS, SHOP VACS AND BUG POISON, THAT WOULD GO AWAY JUST BY TOSSING OUT A ROTTEN BAG OF POTATOES?

Think about it.

Connect with Gary on Google+