Living in cramped spaces with more people than you’re comfortable with is the college experience. For people who know how fast colds spread in college, they can understand how fast other things spread like a juicy secret during class or even worse, bugs.
If you haven’t experienced the dreaded fruit fly in your time yet, say a prayer of thanks for your blessings. The tiny size of these specific species makes their presence horrible enough but what’s worse is that they can live for 40-50 days. Out in nature that is great, wonderful, amazing, but in my room and my bathroom, it’s awful.
I don’t think I’m the only one who has irrational fears about them being in my bed or my clothes or even my hair because of their microscopic size and their ability to fly.
So what do you do? You can’t keep living in fear and try to kill them one by one; that will take forever – and may not even work.
Fruit flies are attracted to sweet smelling and tasting things. You can always take a nice trip to your local dollar store and buy a fruit fly trap. But there are also homemade remedies for those who want to have a fun DIY or project.
The first thing you’ll want to do is get rid of any open fruits or vegetables or uncovered foods that may attract them. This may include just taking out the trash or covering items that may be laying open in your kitchen.
One remedy calls for red wine to attract the flies. You can also add dish soap to make it harder for them to fly away. You put this mixture in a container with plastic wrap over the top and poke holes in the wrap for the flies to go in but not escape.
Another easy solution would be to put rotting fruit in a container just like before that has holes in the plastic wrap atop. The sweet fruit attracts the flies and solves your problem.
However, the most common solution is one that involves apple cider vinegar, according to OrganicLessons.com. The website suggests, “[mixing] two tablespoons of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sugar, a few drops of soap, and 1 liter of water,” and to put the concoction where there are the most flies. You can have other bowls in different rooms to ensure you kill all the pesky flies.
In my opinion, you can never be too careful when it comes to bugs in your home. Take all the precautions necessary to ensure they don’t spread, or if they travel to you from someone else, that you are prepared.