Battling a swarm of fruit flies in your kitchen or bathroom? Get rid of them quickly with this simple, homemade trap:

What You Need:

Apple cider vinegar

Dish soap

A jar or small bowl

Plastic wrap

Basil

One of the best home remedies for fruit flies is to simply put a pot of basil on a window sill or table. This will help reduce the number of fruit flies in the area.

Soap

Dry soap acts as a fruit fly repellent. Sprinkle it into garbage cans and any other problem areas.

Fruit flies are wine connoisseurs. Okay, maybe they are not wine snobs, but they have been known to quaff a few drops here or there. They particularly like Chardonnay or so we hear. Use that knowledge to your advantage: fill up a saucer of some cheap white wine and add a little detergent to it. Leave it around for the flies to sip and die on. This solution brings knew meaning to the expression “gut rot .”

If you fill a small dish with cider vinegar near your fruit bowl it will draw the fruit flies away/also a small bit of wine will do the same.

Also, fruit flies can be eliminated by running bleach or baking soda down your kitchen drain.

Fruit flies also are attracted to garbage. When you’re looking for the thing(s) that’s attracting these flying pests, don’t forget to look for soiled sponges and dish rags, food and drink spills, and, check your kitchen drain. They sometimes hang around drains because it provides moisture and food scraps, two things they need to survive and reproduce. Fruit flies not only eat ripe and rotting food, but they also lay their eggs in it.

Catch one of the bugs and examine it closely. If this proves to be a challenge, hang some fly paper for an hour or so to capture a few of the little buggers. Common household fruit flies (aka Drosophila) grow to a maximum size of 1/8th inch (3mm) long and typically have brownish or yellowish bodies and red eyes. They are also known to be clumsy fliers - a common experience in infested areas is to feel these little bugs kamikaze into your bare skin and face out of nowhere.