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How to Kill Fruit Flies with 3 easy household ingredients!

Yesterday I gave my son a bowl of fruit. After he had had his fill, he set the bowl down like most kids do and ran off. Not too long after that I went to pick it up and noticed little gnats on the fruit! I was shocked. Where did these things come from? I can only imagine they must have hitched a ride in the carton of strawberries but had instantly been attracted back to the open fruit. I can assure you I keep a clean house. The whole thing was disgusting.

My babysitter was over and she said she had been told that equal parts water, equal parts vinegar and a squirt of dish soap would kill fruit flies.

What the heck, so I tried it.

And it worked!fruit-flies

This is about 10 minutes after I put the bowl down in the same area as the old fruit bowl.

fruit-fly-catcher

Then I moved it to the kitchen and after a few hours, this is what happened:

kill-fruit-flies

 

For some reason the flies are attracted to the water and then eventually land and get stuck there. Its safe since its made from household items rather than pesticides. I am just going to leave the bowl on the window sill a few days to finish any extras off.

I hope this tip helps out your kitchen and thank you to my babysitter for this one!

~Trisha

 

 

 

 

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Comments

  1. Marianne says

    I don’t need to kill them because they don’t go on our fruits anymore. Why ? Because we put 2 or 3 wine corks in the fruit basket. I don’t why or how it works but even when summer guets really hot we had no more fruit flyes since we do this.

  5. Ned says

    what an excellent tip! I can’t think of a person who wouldn’t benefit from knowing this.. I hate those little flies that appear from nowhere on my bananas..

  7. Jen-Eighty MPH Mom says

    Awesome idea! Did I ever tell you about the time my house was infested with these fruit flies and I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from? Yeah, well my son had been with his grandma and she sent him home with a banana in a plastic grocery bag. He stuck it in his room and forgot about it. GAG. I thought I would go nuts trying to get rid of them!

  8. Robin Gagnon {Mom Foodie} says

    Last year I had a terrible fruit fly problem… later found out it was due to an apple my daughter had “hidden”. I used containers with watered down wine & fruit juice covered with plastic wrap with holes poked in it to make traps. It worked, but I like this idea better… next time I’ll try it.

  10. Nichol says

    I had an awful time with fruit flies last year, not sure why. I sure hope I don’t have to deal with it again this year, but I did use something similar to this that didn’t work too well. I’ll definitely try this if those buggers come back.

  12. Lucero says

    OMG does this ever work. The past couple of years I’ve been doing this and I’ve had the best success with this method.