How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies in the House

You can find them hanging out near the trash, swarming around the fruit bowl and even swimming in your evening glass of wine. Yep, we’re talking about fruit flies—the little bugs that can cause a big headache (and stomachache, too, for that matter). Fortunately, there are simple store-bought solutions to the problem, as well as all-natural DIY strategies that you can pull off with stuff you already have hanging out in your pantry. Here are five easy methods for how to get rid of fruit flies in the house.

Gnats and fruit flies have a lot in common—namely that they are both really tiny, gross and annoying. Although gnats and fruit flies look similar at first glance (or swat, as it were), it’s relatively easy to distinguish between the two if you look a little closer. According to the pest experts at Orkin, fruit flies and gnats differ in terms of color and body shape; they’re also drawn indoors for different reasons.

Fruit flies look a lot like a miniature version of the common house fly in terms of body shape—meaning that they’re relatively round with prominent, bulging eyeballs (ew). In terms of color, fruit flies tend to fall somewhere on the tan-dark brown spectrum. Gnats, on the other hand, tend to have pointier bodies and dangling legs (think: miniature mosquito); they also have far less noticeable eyes and are almost always dark gray to black in color.

Still not sure what you’re dealing with? Gnats feed on fungus and hang around soil, so they often enter the home by way of potted plants—and once they’re inside, that’s where you’re most likely to find them hanging out. Fruit flies, as their name suggests, are attracted to fruit—particularly the overripe or fermented variety. That said, both these pesky creatures procreate at an alarming rate.

Short answer: Produce and booze—plus the trash cans, recycling bins and sink drains that bear evidence of the two. The bummer about fruit flies (much like gnats) is that they make babies like nobody’s business, so even a minor infraction—say, a bunch of bananas that languished a tad too long in the fruit bowl—and your home can quickly become overrun by them. Fortunately, there are some effective DIY methods you can use to eradicate fruit flies, so take your pick (and then raise a glass to your success).

Ridding your home of fruit flies requires a coordinated effort that consists of first trapping the adult flies and then removing the food source for future generations. There are many effective DIY fruit fly traps you can put together; however, given the rate at which these buggers lay eggs, you’ll still be fighting a losing battle unless you tackle the source of the problem, be it a scuzzy sink drain or a rogue grape that got kicked under the fridge—so definitely do a deep clean to ensure success.