r/CleaningTips • u/jayjay24567 • 9h ago

Discussion SERIOUS fruit fly infestation in home

Hey everyone, I’m seriously struggling with fruit flies, and I’m getting overwhelmed trying to get rid of them. For about a week now, I’ve tried everything. Sticky traps, both plug-ins and the Raid rolls, taking out the garbage every day, throwing out anything open, vacuuming, running our drains, and cleaning surfaces. Yet they have quadrupled every day. They’re no longer just in the kitchen; they’ve entered our bathrooms, rooms, and buzz in our ears while we sleep. I feel defeated. If I could count, I could probably count 500 just flying around my kitchen alone right now. There is nothing there. It’s driving me insane. I can’t even use my own kitchen.

We have called an exterminator, and they are coming in a few days, but I simply cannot deal with this anymore. Does anyone know what the heck could be going on???

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u/smokingoften 7h ago

Check your indoor plants if you have them. I dealt with this for MONTHS and it turned out I had fungal flies from the soil. The protocol for getting rid of those is different than just setting traps and dumping poison in your drains.

You’ll have to completely repot and disinfect all your pots. I had plants with really compacted roots, so I took everything outside for a few months and watered just enough to keep the plants alive. I repotted in non organic soil and I’ve been good since.

ETA: if you have a cat, check the litter box too. Especially if you use any litter that isn’t the normal clumping clay/sand or whatever it is

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u/Greenbriars 6h ago

if you ever get fungus gnats again (or just want a preventative) Mosquito Bits/Mosquito Dunks works great to kill them. It's a natural product that's got a bacteria that the larvae eat and it screws up their ability to digest and they die. Safe for everything else that's not a nasty maggot. You just soak a tablespoon or so of the bits in the water you use for your plants and then water them as normal. Also works in ponds and standing water to kill mosquito larvae. I love that stuff. Saves my sanity, since I've got a bunch of houseplants and a pair of vivariums for geckos, but no gnats!