How to Get Rid of Nasty Fruit Flies

Photo by Flickr user mschmidt62

Those of you who are signed up to the e-mail list received a unique, e-mailed blog post, in your inbox, on Wednesday, about fruit flies.

The short version is that our house was infested with fruit flies about a week ago.

It was gross. They were everywhere, and we had no idea where they came from or how to get rid of the annoying jerks.

I appreciated the e-mails I received from many of you who had some great suggestions on how to get rid of the pests.

I'm glad to say that, as of today, most of the fruit flies are gone. (Happy Dance!!)

How'd we get there? 

We tried all kinds of stuff.

• We made an effort to do the dishes several times a day, making sure that the sink never had dirty dishes in it.
  
• We wiped down the counters with anti-bacterial cloths, several times a day.
  
• We swept often. We took out the trash at least once a day, and were careful not let things like fruit or food scraps sit in the can.
  
• Each night before we went to bed, we would pour bleach and scalding hot water down the drains.

The situation seemed to be somewhat under control when we would retire for the night, yet every morning when we awoke and strolled downstairs to the kitchen, the swarm had returned.

What it comes down to is, no matter what we were doing, the suckers just kept reproducing, and they were doing it (literally and metaphorically) faster than we could kill them.

We had to find the source. We looked in cabinets and pantries. We had moved all bread and fruit products into sealed containers in the fridge. No matter how hard we looked, we just became more and more puzzled.

Then we had a breakthrough.

On Thursday, I was walking through the house, like a madman, carrying a flyswatter, looking for the enemy. As I was walking through the office, I spotted it out of the corner of my eye.

On the trash can, there sat several fruit flies. It didn't strike me as a major deal, until I looked into the can. There were what looked to be hundreds of flies inside the can.

I quickly and instinctively grabbed the bag, tied it shut, before they could escape, and ran outside to dump the bag in our outside trash can.

What had happened was that Kim had been working from home. She was in the office every day. She ate her lunch in the office.

Several weeks ago, Kim quit working from home. Apparently, the last day she was still at home, Kim threw away her lunch in the trash can, and we hadn't checked that particular can since her last day.

In short, there had been rotting food sitting in a trash can in our office for weeks.

In retrospect, it's no wonder we had an infestation of fruit flies, but we just never went in that room. It's a little embarrassing, but it was also a good feeling knowing we'd finally found the source.

That same day, I set up traps all over the kitchen. We hung glue traps from the cabinets, and we set up DIY traps, using a cup with some fruit, soapy water, and saran wrap with tiny holes in it. Several days later, the flies are almost entirely gone.

I'm extremely happy. One more day with fruit flies, and I may have lost my mind.


When was the last time you were dealing with a nuisance that felt like it would never go away?