Gnats

ecgal87

Hi!  I'm new to The Nest, but I thought I would ask this question of you all because it's driving me crazy.  I (think) this is a cleaning question.

We have gnats in our house, and this is probably not correct, but it seems like it's the same 4.  One in the kitchen, one in the dining room, one in the living room, and one in one of our bathrooms.  I can't kill these!  I can't find the source.  We have no rotting food laying around, no gross stuff you would expect to attract gnats, and I clean the house top to bottom every Thursday.

My questions are: what do you think could be attracting them? and more importantly, how do I get rid of them?!  I've tried a mixture of Dawn and apple cider vinegar that worked for a friend of mine, but so far no gnats have been captured.  I've seen them land on the cup but will not go in it.  I have no idea how they are fast enough for me not to be able to swat them.  It's driving me nuts!

ecritzz

I use the dawn and apple cider vinegar trick and I catch SO many of them! I don't know if maybe you put too much dish soap. I've noticed if I do more than one squirt of soap they are less attracted and I use quite a bit of apple cider vinegar.

At the hardware store the other day I saw a trap from Terro. It looked kind of like a little apple, but I think that was for fruit flies.

We used to have gnats bad at our apartment and they seemed to come from the garbage disposal. I bought the Plink garbage disposal cleaners and those seemed to help.

Good luck!

ecgal87

Thank you for all of your suggestions!  Now that I think about it, I think I put equal parts Dawn and cider.  I didn't even know they made garbage disposal cleaners (and now I feel like "duh!")  We do have a disposal, but it never hit me that it could be the source until now.  Thanks so much!

lmdbww

We just had them too, they are really bad this year becuase of the weather.

Mine were flying in when we went outside to take trash out. We keep our outside trash can on the patio right by the door.  When I figured that out, I made sure to start shutting the door when I stepped outside, and I moved the can away from the door.

Getting rid of them inside was a different story.  Nothing worked for attracting them so I just made sure the counters were cleaned off (no food, dirty plates, etc.), I emptied out our inside kitchen trash and recycle bin daily, and kept the sink dry.  They would fly in the air, and i'd kill them mid-flight. lol 

Tygress_Luv111908

Are they Gnats or fruit flies? Gnats are usually pretty tiny. Fruit flies are a bit bigger and have a reddish/brown eye. We had them really bad a few months ago. I tried the apple cider vinegar in a cup thing but they would just climb out. Might be because i didnt use dawn with it. I did find a pretty good trick though! Get Fly paper and brush pure apple cider vinegar on it! Its like flies on shyte! That attracted them and then they got stuck and in turn died on it. Best.thing.ever!