This is not a recipe for food, but a recipe to deal with something I think we have all had a problem with at one time or another, fruit flies/gnats.
Aren’t they awful? I can’t stand them and the last couple of weeks I have had a bad case of them. I could not figure out where they were coming from and they were driving me crazy. So, I did a quick internet search on how to get rid of them. One of the tips had you use a pop bottle. We rarely drink pop, we don’t keep it in the house, therefore we had not have pop bottles.
But one of the other ideas sounded like an easy and frugal trick, but would it work? I was desperate, so I gave it a try.
Here is what I did.
Take a bowl and put some apple cider vinegar in it, I used about 1 cup of vinegar. Add a few drops of dishwashing soap and stir around. Cover with plastic wrap. Poke holes in the plastic wrap with a fork. I poked the fork through about 4 times. You want the hole big enough for the fruit flies to get through, but you do not want them too big.
Sit the bowl near where you are having problems with the fruit flies. I set mine on the kitchen counter. After about 4 hours this is what I found.
It worked. The cider vinegar attracts them and they die in the liquid. This is so easy and it really did help get rid of my problem. I am going to remember this trick.
For more kitchen tips see Tammy’s Recipes.
I love to cook and bake, and my family loves to eat. Lynn’s Kitchen Adventures is all about sharing my love of cooking, recipes, tips, and ideas of how I combine this cooking passion with a busy life. [
The vinegar and dish detergent really works. I have been using it for a couple of years and it definitely work.
Many thanks. I have the same problem and had heard about a cheap trick to rid the kitchen of these pest, but forgot what it was. I should have known– just ask Lynn!
I usually take an empty juice concentrate container, put apple cider vinegar in it, then put a cone-shaped paper inside with a small hole at the point of the cone. This also traps the fruit flies and eventually they die in the liquid.
How cool is that! I’m glad to know that trick too! 🙂 By the way, I did not realize that fruit fly and gnat were the same thing! haha! I’ve always called them gnats never realizing that it’s the same thing as a fruit fly! Thanks for the tip!
I think fruit flies and gnats are actually two different things. But this trick is suppossed to work on both of them. I think what I have/had is fruit flies. I also think people use both terms for the same thing and we probably shouldn’t. 🙂
I’ve never put a cover on it, but we do virtually the same thing.
I did that last summer! It worked awesome.
Funny enough.. I was trying to do greener things when it comes to cleaning the house, so I was using good old vinegar and water to clean the kitchen, little did I know it was attracting more of the little buggers!!
The traps worked really well though.
@Jen,
I tried eliminating these nasty little vermin by cleaning my kitchen with vinegar also. Although I had tried the fly-traps before, I’d forgotten about the dish soap.
I have a lot of fruit flies right now because of a science experiment my son did (actually breeding them). I had tried this trick before, but I didn’t know about putting the plastic wrap over the bowl. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work well. Thanks for the tip. Perfect timing!
I’d have to agree with Lynn. My fungus gnats hang around my vegetable seedlings that I started indoors. The fruit flies are more interested in fruits and vegetables, especially my organic bananas. Both are a problem.
Fruit flies are like my arch nemesis! Really they’re ridiculous in the condo we live in. The best answer we’ve come up with is that they come in the house through sinks or the garbage disposal due to blockage or some problem going on with the water/sewer lines to our whole block. They have tried to fix them several times but no real results. Anyway what that means for us is if you leave a piece of fruit on the counter in the kitchen for a minute or two, it’s covered in fruit flies! I had heard about the vinegar/soap before but not about covering the bowl! So thanks for sharing that tip:)
I ,too am a victim of these horrible pests!! I have left them cocktails all over the house and they are still everywhere. They are driving me nuts. There is nothing out for them to eat and still, they persist! I am on a mission!!!
I have the same problems. Hoping this works. It seems like when you kill one of them there are six more that come around. These things are driving me crazy.