Naptime DIY: How to get rid of fruit flies

It is early fall and there’s a swarm of small, peppery specks flying around our kitchen.  They’re fruit flies are they are making their new abode at chez Mojo more comfortable. My first thought of fruit flies went to the outbreak in 1989 (and others); but after a little research I realized that the ones in my kitchen were a bit different from those pesky creatures.

We live in a pig sty

That was my second thought.  However, after looking around the kitchen I saw dozens of places that fruit flies could breed or live.

• The old bread on top of the refrigerator
• The bananas that are on the counter
• The disposal that has debris on the lid
• The trap in the sink that has solid waste in it

Clean it up

We threw out the bread on top of the refrigerator that was several shades of green, cleared the counter-then wiped it down, put all of the fruit in the frig and cleaned the disposal.  We also made a pact to keep the kitchen cleaner so they won’t have a place to breed once we get rid of them.

Goodbye fruit flies

For us, bug bombing the house is not an option.  Having a toddler cruise around the floor has too many artificial options so we did a little research.  All of them consisted of trapping the flies, which is a bit of a misnomer.  I just wanted these fruit flies dead, I didn’t want to transport them to a safe environment or ask them how they’re feeling.

In reality you do ‘trap’ them, but it’s not because you want to be kind to them, it’s just an efficient way to get them out of the house over time.

Make a trap

We made two types of traps for our fruit flies

The funnel trap attracted more fruit flies, but they didn’t fall into our trap-they just stayed on the funnel.  Our problem was that the funnel was too steep; we should’ve made the funnel wider, apparently that invites the flies into the jar.  Inside the jar we made a mixture of apple cider vinegar and small pieces of fruit.  If you’re going to do this method just be sure to make the funnel larger than the one shown here.

Our second trap was more effective.  This is a simple plastic container covered with clear wrap that has a dozen or so holes in it.  The holes are small, maybe 1/16 of an inch at the largest.  Inside the container we put a banana peel and some apple cider vinegar.  Initially this trap was more of a feeding station, with the flies coming and going.  After a day though I realized that the edges of the clear wrap need to be tied to the container, once we did that our trap collected lots of fruit flies.  Be sure to empty this container every day or so, this cleans out the fruit flies and allows you to freshen up the mixture.

Be patient

It took us a week and a couple of days to fully eradicate our kitchen from fruit flies.  Once it was clean we reminded ourselves of the second step, clean it up-and keep it clean.

As a stay at home dad I miss having the spare time to fix things. Even though the child is my full time job, things still break or need a fix in the house. Sometimes the repair will be something that I can easily complete and other times it’s a repair that I simply should’ve paid to have it done.  Regardless, I’ll write it up here in hopes that you may be able to gauge what you can do and when you need to call in for help. The series is called, Naptime DIY because the tasks are hopefully accomplished in 60 minutes, which is a good naptime period.  In this case the actual time takes much longer, but the setup is cheap and doesn’t take long to create.