Fruit flies are really annoying! Small pesky little flies that seem take over your fruit bowl or kitchen! Now that Vancouver has the mandatory composting I feel like I am fighting the never ending battle of fruit flies in my apartment. We have 2 compost containers, one container for food to be composted inside your apartment which is quite small and gets emptied into our one that is on our patio which is a bit bigger that gets brought to our buildings compost bin when needed.  Add on top of that a hot dry summer it’s a recipe for an invasion!

Since this issue has arisen I have been looking for new ways to battle the little invaders to the dismay of my cat whole spends her time stalking them around the apartment trying to catch them.  Now there is the basic housekeeping cleaning that helps. Making sure counters are cleaned, no food scraps are lying around or in the sink.

I find the sink to be a good place to see if I have fruit flies or drain flies! You can tell if you have these vs. fruit flies by putting the sticky side of tape down over your drain over night and in the morning seeing if you have flies stuck to it. Your drains can be a safe haven for drain flies… EW right? They also let me know there were things you could do to prevent this from happening. Try not to dump food scraps down your drain (unless you have a garburator) these little bits of food get stuck and make place them to live and breed.  So the other way to clean your drain is to pour hot water with some bleach down your drain. This will also clean out any smell your drain may have. I know this is not the best for the environment, you can also use baking soda with hot water and a small amount of vinegar, this method will clean your drain as well. Now that you know you have fruit flies and not other little pests and your sink drain smells fresh the battle can continue.

Sponges and clothes need to be cleaned too! They are cleaning your surfaces and can get quite dirty if not tended too. The last thing you want while trying to get rid of these flies is to find them on your cleaning implements. Every once and a while I give my cleaning implements a good clean to. This way they are ready for action and I know sooner than later when they need to be replaced.

Time to set up a trap! All the cleaning will not get rid of the flies you already have, you want to deal with your current pests. The best method that has worked for me is apple cider vinegar (don’t use your expensive one buy the cheaper one for this) in a jar with a paper made funnel. You can make this with a small old jar or container.

First fill the jar with vinegar -quite full

Make a cone out of paper that will be wide enough to sit in the jar – make sure you cut a very small hole at the bottom

Trim and tape the outside edges to make sure it is sealed

Place in area where you have your largest infestation and wait!

They will fly in because they are attracted to the smell of the apple cider vinegar. You can set up a few of these if you have a few hot spots around your home or kitchen.

Now that we have these set up its time to clean! Yes that dreaded thing you really didn’t want me to say! I had to do it too to deal with ours. Get out your favorite kitchen cleaner and start the process. Taking everything off the counter and giving it a good wipe down, cleaning your fruit bowl and any other container that you leave out with food in. Wiping down the walls plus your garbage can and composting bins inside and out, after all of this not only your kitchen will be really clean but you will also notice a large drop in your fruit flies.

So here are the tips for dealing with fruit flies:

Try not to keep a lot of food out on the counter for too long

Clean the areas where you prep food right away

Set up fruit fly traps – If you search online there are many more than just the vinegar trap but it’s my favorite.

Don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink too long!

Good Luck in your battle against the annoying fruit fly and I hope this helped!