How To Get Rid of Gnats Indoors: An Easy Guide
How can something so tiny be such a huge annoyance? You never really expect them to invade your home, until one day you forget a piece of fruit on the countertop, you forgot to clean out the garbage disposal, or maybe you just overwatered your avocado plant. Whatever the cause, the facts are these – pesky little gnats have come to rule over your house. These stubborn pests seem to multiply by the second and to show up everywhere and even though gnats are pretty harmless, they can be very infuriating. Constantly hovering around you and your food. So, if you are sick of these tiny bugs dominating your home, let’s see how to get rid of gnats indoors easily and win the war.
Gnats are tiny but annoying
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What Causes Gnats to be in Your House?
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Causes
Typically, they will enter your house from the outdoors through walls, windows, doors, or even little cracks or holes in your foundation. Since gnats feel most at home in a warm, moist environment, they often search out to infest trash cans, rotting fruit, sugar, overwatered soil, drains and more. Make sure to keep an eye out for anything you may have left out in the open that could attract them. All it takes for them to come back is one overripe banana, and they’ll be making themselves at home again!
Prevention
The best thing to do is keep your kitchen clean, as well as the whole home. This will make it less likely for you to attract gnats. Make sure to store your food in sealed containers and throw out any overly ripe fruit. It’s also best if you have a tightly covered trash can and clean out your drains and garbage disposal regularly. If you see them flying around most frequently around your plants, try letting your plants dry out in between watering. This will prevent the critters from laying eggs.
How to get rid of gnats indoors?
Gnats vs Fruit Flies
There are a couple of types of small, black flies alongside gnats that can be commonly found inside our homes. Each, however, is attracted to different things. It’s important to figure out what kind of tiny pests are plaguing your home, so you can get rid of them more efficiently.
Fruit Flies
These critters are attracted to ripe, rotting or decaying fruits and vegetables. They also enjoy stinky trash, garbage disposals, and even open bottles of alcohol. Even though they are most common in the summer, you can spot them any time of year. You can recognize them by their brown color and rounder body.
The sugar in fruit attracts them
Fungus Gnat
These obnoxious little mosquito-like black insects have elongated bodies and can be typically found all up in your plants. They lay their eggs in the soil, and are quite common for nursery plants. This means you can bring them into your home without even knowing!
Gnats lay their eggs in the soil
Drain Flies
As their name suggests these pests live in drains, sewers, septic tanks and overall anywhere you can find stagnant water. They are fuzzy, large and have moth like wings.
You can find them near drains
How to Get Rid of Gnats?
If you have a gnat infestation, there are several ways you can eliminate them. Of course, it’s best to find out what attracted them in the first place, so you can get rid of their food source and cut them off from reproducing. After you find the source, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and take them head on. Let’s check out some commercial ways on how to get rid of gnats indoors.
Fly Paper
One of the most trust-worthy solution on the market. All it does is simply catch bugs on its sticky paper, you can’t really go wrong with it. You can hang ribbon like fly paper in areas of your home that seem to get a lot of gnat traffic or try out window fly paper. This type of paper will cover an entire window in an adhesive sheet.
Sticky fly paper gets the job done
Bug Zapper
Even tough they are most commonly used for larger bugs, having a bug zapper is also a bonus. There are plenty of noiseless designs that are safe for indoor use you can try out. These little machines should be able to catch the majority of annoying flies and gnats in your home. The best part of it is that you won’t even have to do anything except turning it on!
Get rid of the gnats without lifting a finger
Chemical Spray
Sometimes the infestation is so stubborn it needs an extra strong chemical spray to get rid of them. Although keep in mind you should take caution as after using some sprays you may need to leave the house for a bit. There are plenty of options on the market to try out, just make sure to always follow manufacturer directions.
Not all sprays are safe for indoor use
Neem Oil
Neem oil is an organic insecticide that is made from the seeds of neem trees. You can find such oil at most places that sell plants. However, when buying make sure to see if you are getting a concentrate, which you will need to dilute yourself or if it’s already in a pre-diluted spray bottle. If you have fungus gnats soak the top 5 to 10 cm of the plant’s soil with the oil about once a week for a month or two.
This oil comes from neem trees
Pest Control Company
If you wish to be free of the time and hassle it takes to get rid of gnats, or all home remedies and commercial products seem to fail, it’s time to bring in the big guns. You can always hire a professional pest control provider to help you address the problem.
Call pest control if no other methods work
Home Remedies for Gnats
If you don’t want or can’t buy any of the store-bought solutions at the moment, but the gnats just won’t leave, don’t worry! There are plenty of at-home remedies. Most of the items can already be found in your kitchen cabinets and will take minutes to set up.
Apple Cider Vinegar
When there is an issue to tackle at home the true heroes seem to always be either baking soda or vinegar, sometimes both. This time included. Vinegar is a great method on how to get rid of gnats indoors. As the bugs find apple cider vinegar’s sweet smell very appealing, we can use it to set an easy trap with just a few household items.
Items:
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Bowl
- Dish Soap
Method:
- Pour a few tablespoons of the vinegar into a bowl.
- Stir in a few drops of dish soap.
- Let the bugs get stuck into the sweet liquid. They will not be able to leave, and you can dispose of them.
Apple cider vinegar is used in many home remedies
Diluted Bleach
If you are dealing with gnats around the kitchen sink, bathtub or any place with a drain really, all you need is some bleach. Dilute one cup of the liquid with one gallon of water. Pour a cup of the solution down the drain. Flush with hot water and repeat if needed. This should do the job!
Make sure to dilute the bleach
Candle Trap
You don’t need to sacrifice your beautiful DIY candles to get the little pests, just one normal, plain, candlestick, and some common household items to set up this old trick up.
Items:
- Candlestick
- Candlestick Holder
- Pan
- Water
- Lighter
Method:
- Place a long tapered candle into the holder.
- Put the holder into a pan that’s partially filled with water.
- Light the candle.
- Turn off all the lights and wait for the gnats to fly into the flame.
- If they don’t hit the flame directly and burn, they will fall into the water and drown.
Gnats naturally go into the burning flame
Wine
This trick is similar to the apple cider vinegar one. You can just use wine instead of the vinegar, or you can leave a nearly empty wine bottle open on its own. Gnats will crawl inside as they are attracted to the smell but won’t be able to get back out.
If you don’t have vinegar, use wine
Fruit Trap
On the same principle as the wine and vinegar, you can also use fruit. Leave rotting fruit in a jar or bowl, cover it with some plastic wrap and secure it. Poke some hole in the wrap and the gnats will rush to it and get trapped in the process.
Make a fruit trap to capture the gnats
Potato Chunks
You can place raw potato chunks in the soil around the pots. Fungus gnats and larvae find them very attractive. With this trick you will trap the bugs away from the plant roots. After leaving them in the pot for a few days you can remove the infested chunks and replace them with fresh pieces if needed.
Fungus gnats and larvae find potatoes attractive
Alongside other home invaders such as ants, gnats can be super annoying. That’s why we should know how to get rid of them. Overall, these are the classic methods you can try out on how to get rid of gnats indoors and away from your beautiful home.
Get rid of those pesky gnats with these methods
