Bye Bye Drain Flies + DIY How-To Video

Each year around this time, I have an issue with fruit flies in my kitchen. They seem to multiply overnight, and it drives me borderline insane. I have tried everything. Different traps and hacks claiming to work. The only thing that ultimately has worked for me is a DIY fruit fly trap using vinegar and dish soap along with ensuring I washed my fruit and tossed overripe produce immediately.

At the first sight of fruit flies each year, I waste no time. I immediately set up my DIY traps. I find it so satisfying to look in the little bowls each morning to witness how many fruit fly corpses are floating around. But last year, I became frustrated when my traps were getting some of them, but there were still numerous little bugs flying around our house.

I was complaining to some of my friends about it one night and my mind was blown at what one of them told me. She said there is something called a drain fly. I had never heard of this. Apparently drain flies, though basically harmless, like to lay their eggs in moist areas like a drain. Even more interesting, all the friends I was with that evening said they too were having an issue this year with tiny bugs that wouldn’t go away.

It didn’t appear there was an actual reason we were all having this problem. None of us had clogged drains with standing water or unused toilets in our house. We concluded that our neighborhood was just having some sort of random infest; there is no way to know if this is actually true. But what we did know is that we had to take care of it.

I immediately started looking up how to rid my house of these. Thankfully, the solution was simple and so far has been very effective.

If you have fruit flies but think you might also have drain flies, I suggest doing a combination of the vinegar dish soap solution and this new remedy I discovered. I have a hard time telling the difference between the bugs. But what was interesting was after I did this new remedy, I had triple the dead fruit flies in my soap solution than I had previously.

What you will need:
Measurements are per drain. I suggest doing one solution per drain in your house, including showers.

½ cup baking soda
1 cup vinegar (I used white vinegar)
Very hot water (I read that boiling can be bad for pipes so I used the hottest I could get before boiling)

What you will do:

Sprinkle the baking soda in and on the drain opening (getting into the drain)
Pour in the vinegar
It will start to bubble like a science experiment (my kids loved it!)
After about 10 minutes, flush the drain with hot water (I put it into a large bowl then poured in)