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There are bigger things in this world right now than worrying about how to get rid of fruit flies in your house, I am fully aware of this. But with things the way they are, most of us are spending a lot more time in our kitchens, and we want them to be places of sanctuary, not breeding grounds for bugs. There is nothing more unsettling than picking up your wine glass to take a sip of that sweet healing nectar and finding an “uninvited guest” in your vino.
This was exactly my problem half a dozen years ago. Let me set the stage: we lived at the beach in Southern California and tended a thriving garden in our front yard. What a life! There was one little nagging annoyance—the fruit flies that came in on our freshly-plucked-from-the-ground produce. They were too small to swat, too fast to smash, and I’m too much of a hippie to spray chemicals around the kitchen.
I went online to shop for something to solve my glass-half-full-of-dead-flies problem, but I found nothing that I would want on my kitchen counter, only plastic pieces of future landfill.
So I found directions for making a DIY fruit fly catcher by fashioning a cone out of a piece of paper and placing it in a glass with some apple cider vinegar in the bottom. Guess what? It worked! All those fruit flies were dead in the bottom of the glass! Except now I had to look at a glass of dead fruit flies on my counter every day. Ugh. It worked, but it was gross. Glass half empty or glass half full?
My entrepreneurial brain started working on this and I thought, “I could make a nicer version of this and hide the bodies.” (Incidentally, this is also how I solve most of my problems.) I thought back to my off-and-on ceramics hobby, signed up for time at a great ceramic studio, and made some prototypes. I sold them on Etsy just like that (snapping fingers), and realized I was on to something.
I found a factory to make them for me in large quantities, and to sum it up, I ended up creating a bee-yoo-tiful vase that also happens to be a fruit fly trap! It fulfills all three requirements for my Elevated Lifestyle products:
- Beautiful
- Useful
- Long-lasting
I sell them on Amazon (affiliate link) and they've been a hit!
How does this fruit fly trap work? Well, it’s easy--you simply pour a drop of liquid dish soap and a little unfiltered apple cider vinegar, sweet wine, juice, or beer into the jar. Replace the lid, and wait for those buggers to fly in the hole in the lid. (I also recommend rubbing a little bit of the liquid around the opening of the lid to really attract the fruit flies.) The sugar and yeast in the liquid attracts fruit flies, and the soap breaks the surface tension. Fruit flies are so dumb, they fly into the vase, but can’t find their way out and eventually perish in the liquid.
This fruit fly trap is great for people, like me, who like to use natural methods of pest control for getting rid of fruit flies and other bugs. The last thing I want to do is spray chemicals around my kitchen that could hurt pets or kids.
So that’s the story! I hope these fruit fly catchers help you in your unending quest to have a more refined, less wasteful, less harmful home (with apologies to all the fruit flies out there).
~Sarah
