So our kitchen is full of gnats..  Our fresh fruit has become a gang hangout for these little monsters, and there isn’t enough room in the fridge to hide the fruit away.  So I had to get creative..

I looked online for any type of way to trap the gnats and get rid of them, and in just one go of it, I found a perfect (and easy) trap to make!

(I would have sourced the link on here from where I found it, but I couldn’t find it again..!  So let me just start by saying that this was NOT my idea for a trap, I found it online and just re-created it.)

 

The first thing I did was I took an empty pop bottle, washed it out, and cut it up.

Then, I mixed roughly a half cup of apple cider vinegar and a half cup of sugar in a bowl until the sugar was mostly dissolved.  Then I pored that into the empty pop bottle (up left) and added water so that it was about half way full.  Finally, I put the top of the pop bottle (up right) in it upside down.  (See picture below)

(If you try this at home, tape the two pieces together!  The top falls into the stuff a lot..)

So there it was, my gnat trap at the ready.  I was ready for a sneak attack..  And the gnats were ready for a new snack!  (There was even a gnat that flew up and onto the trap right after I took this picture!)  I was excited, and confident that it would work..  So I walked away to get some homework done and came back an hour later.

One hour later: When I went back to check on the trap, and to my happy surprise, there were three gnats INSIDE the trap floating in the vinegar!  To my annoyance however, there were about fifteen more perched on TOP of the the trap looking down into it..!  I think they were trying to find out how to save the ones inside..  Every once in a while, one would go in and land on top of another gnat, then find out he’s trapped too, and another one would have to come in and save them (only to find out they are trapped as well).  It was a vicious cycle for the gnats.

After another hour, I came back to check on how things were going, and was happy to see about six gnats in the trap this time..  But it was taking too long.  It had been two hours and all I had to show for it was a few gnats?!  This was too slow of a war..

I went into the back room and grabbed my electric fly swatter, hopping beyond hope that these little monsters weren’t too small to smack around!  I waited a minute, watching as the gnats went flying back to the top of the pop bottle trap.  They were mocking me now as they flew around it without landing on it..  Finally, when enough of them were on there, I pounced.  I held the button down to activate the fly swatter, and I leapt at the pop bottle with vengeance!

!!SNAP, CRACKLE, POP!! (rice-crispies)

A few got away, but I had the last laugh that day!  I chased them around the room, trying to hit them, and one by one they slowly diminished.

Somehow though, they kept coming back!  And they were strong in numbers..  I was just one woman, I couldn’t take on all of these gnats by myself!  I needed a better trap, and I needed it to work without me in the room.  I had stuff that needed done, I couldn’t be walking around the kitchen killing gnats with a fly swatter all day!  So I devised a devilish plan..

I grabbed some tape from the cupboard, and went to work working on the ‘gnat trap 2000’!

It was perfect..  It was beautiful..  And the best part?  It worked!  (See all those black dots around the trap?  Those are dead gnats!  Mwahahahaha!)

I taped the flyswatter so that it would stay on without me having to hold down the button.  Then, with the help of some cups, I propped it up so that the electric part was over the vinegar trap.  The gnats would go to fly into the trap, or sit on top, and ZAP!  No more gnat problem..  (Or so I thought.)

I left the fly swatter on all day, loving the satisfying ZAP‘s coming from the kitchen every now and then.  By the end of the day, there were countless bodies surrounding the trap!  I called it a day, gave the fly swatter a well deserved break, and cleaned out the trap before throwing it away.

The next day, the gnats were back..  (How do they multiply so fast?!)  I don’t know how to get rid of these things for good!  You would think that because of how cold it is (both inside and outside the house) they would be dead!  But they just keep coming back!

For now, I have a good trap for killing off the numbers.  But what happens when they keep coming back time after time?!

Does anyone know how to get rid of these pests once and for all??  Has anyone else been dealing with gnats really bad this year?  (Or any other year for that matter?)  What are you doing to deal with the gnats in your home?  Leave a comment below!  And as always, have a great day and don’t forget to smile!

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