STEP 1-ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!

I’m grossed out to say we had two different kinds of flies breeding in our home and I finally got rid of them! It started out innocently enough. We had some bananas and apples in a fruit bowl on the counter late summer. A couple fruit flies turned into a little annoying so we got rid of the fruit in the bowl, made 2 homemade fruit fly traps and put them on different parts in the kitchen. I also kicked our potato basket and watched it for a second to see if any flies flew but nope. The traps caught a good amount of them and I got rid of them. I figured the few flies left would be starved out since I got rid of the fruit bowl. I was wrong! After a week the number was back to annoying, but this time there were some in the bathroom, too. So, we made more traps and put them in the bathroom and kitchen. Only this time, we caught ZERO flies. They were buzzing around everywhere but none had gone in the trap!

2-INVEST IN STICKY TRAPS

Fly swatters were useless because the baby flies were so small. Every day I spent a half hour swinging sticky paper around because I didn’t want the baby flies to grow up and lay more eggs! I realized the flies in our home that evaded my sticky traps were growing slightly bigger and had stripes on their wings. EEW! I identified them as cluster flies once I caught them on my sticky paper, and there was also regular small fruit flies being caught in the goo.

3-SEARCH EVERYWHERE AND CLEAR OUT EVERYTHING!

We hadn’t had fruit on our counter for almost 2 weeks. I always make a point to take the garbage out every day so our house doesn’t stink, and I checked outside to make sure they weren’t breeding in our flower pots or something. It was getting cold outside and no way were those flies coming from anywhere buy inside my house BLEH. I went through every item of our food storage, everything under the kids beds, inside the toy boxes, in the closets, hoping to find the rotting apple I had pictured in my mind that they were all flying out from. Nothing. I checked the window sills for small pools of water, our vents, and threw away our humidifier because I found a dead fly in it. I was hoping maybe that was the source? But I was kidding myself because I hadn’t seen any maggots. I decided to pour bleach down our bathroom and kitchen sinks and then plug them at night in case that’s where the magic was happening. At this point I was also awaiting the arrival of a bug zapper light to zap those babies dead and not have to waste time swatting at them with sticky paper every day and having to buy the sticky trap paper again. That stupid light didn’t do a THING. The flies didn’t even CARE that it was there, even though I put it right in the thick of where they hung out, elevated the light like the instructions said and everything.

4-GET THE PRODUCT RIGHT!

The bleach down the drains wasn’t making a difference so I got on Amazon and purchased Natural Armor’s Fruit Fly and Drain Fly Killer. I went to pick up my kids from my lovely sister-in-laws house after an appointment and told her I was going MAD with the 20 new flies that would just show up in our house every day. She said it happened to her too, and she went crazy until she figured out they were coming from two different potato sources in her home. I thought well, that can’t be it because our potatoes are dry. I already nudged the basket and watched for flies to come up, which there were none. A couple days of her words ringing in my ears later, I decided to go through our basket of potatoes. We had gone as a family to glean potatoes from a field nearby and filled a small laundry basket with them. I started taking potatoes out and looking for damp spots or maggots. After several potatoes, I saw flies flying out. That was enough for me! My husband picked up the whole basket and took them right out the door. Between the specialty gel we poured down the sink to kill any breeding going on there, and taking the infested potatoes outside, the fruit flies were done. It took me a day or two to catch 100% of the ones left in our house but they didn’t come back. To my complete RELIEF.

Best of luck with your unwanted fly guests!

Jexid