How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies

There are a few main ways to get rid of fruit flies.

1. Prevention

The first way to get rid of fruit flies is to prevent them from coming into your house in the first place. To do this, you want to make your house hard to get into and make it so fruit flies don't even want to come in.

Scroll down to the "How to Prevent Fruit Flies" section for more info.

2. Kill them

If you have the fruit flies in your home and need to get rid of them quickly, you need to kill them. There are quite a few ways to do this.

What I always did with fruit flies and ants is used Windex window cleaner. Find a group of the flies on your counter or shelf or window, and spray them. The spray will kill them quickly. Then you wipe them up. It's a down and dirty method, but it gets the job done.

A more fun way is to take a little vacuum like a Dirt Devil that has a hose and uses a bag (a bagless vac is not good for this)... Take the vacuum, turn it on, and suck up the fruit flys! Grab them right out of the air! It's fun and clean.

3. Trap them

The way to get rid of fruit flys that doesn't require much work is to trap them. You set the trap and let the trap do the work.

There are two basic ways to trap them, you just have to bait them in. For more info, scroll down to the "How to make a fruit fly trap" section.

There are a couple ways to make a fruit fly trap. I like traps because they only take a minute to make, then they do all the work.

The basis of a fruit fly trap is to combine a bait that attracts them with a method of killing them.

Trap #1 goes something like this:

Take a small plastic cup and put in a couple ounces of apple cider vinegar. Drop in a little chunk of banana if you want some extra smell.

Then put some cling wrap over the cup. Let it sink down a bit, like a funnel. Put a hole in the center.

The fruit flies will get attracted to the scent of ripe fruit and climb down into the cup. But then they're too stupid to find the hole to escape. They'll go up the sides but be trapped in. Eventually they'll die.

This is called a "reverse funnel" and the idea actually works for trapping birds and other flying animals, as well.

Here is the best way to make a fruit fly trap at home - trap #2.

Start out with the same cup with some apple cider vinegar in it. But also add a few drops of liquid dish detergent. Stir it up.

With this trap, the flies go in to drink the vinegar. But when they land on it, they get sucked in thanks to the detergent. Then they drown. (Or get killed from drinking a little detergent.) A double whammy!

Try it. You'll see the results. The cup is filled with dead flies overnight!

Let's say you just trapped or killed a bunch of fruit flies. Now it's time to make sure you don't get any more moving in!

The first thing to do is clean your house. Especially the kitchen. Make sure it is spotless. The counters should be clean - there should be no spilled food anywhere and no dirty dishes out in the open.

If you have a garbage disposal, make sure that's clean. Also run drain cleaner down your drain to keep that clean as well. Fruit flies sense all this stuff, even if you don't see it.

In lieu of drain cleaner, you can run a little bleach or a mix of hot water and baking soda down the drain.

Also, make it a habit not to leave food out. It should be in the cupboard, refrigerator, or in a sealed bag.

Lastly, keep screens in your windows. That's a little bit of a deterrent.

For more advice, check out EliminateFruitFlies.com.

It's a book about getting rid of fruit flies.