Get Rid Of Gnats Once And For All With White Vinegar
Do you have gnats claiming your house as their own? You can get rid of them once and for all with a common household ingredient. Distilled white vinegar has many uses; you can turn it into a cleansing spray and a trap for those pesky bugs. Although, it depends on what kind of gnats you have in your home. Gnats is an umbrella term for tiny flies, so you may be dealing with an infestation of fruit flies or fungus gnats. As the name implies, fruit flies are attracted to over-ripe produce. They can be identified by their reddish-brown-orange color and are often found in the kitchen. Meanwhile, fungus gnats are usually black and live in the soil of indoor plants.
You want to know which gnats you're trying to evict from your home because the white vinegar will only work if you have fruit flies. They can be hard to eliminate if you don't keep a super tidy kitchen because the females can lay around 500 eggs that will hatch after a day. That's why you need to ensure you're cleaning your kitchen with a white vinegar spray to prevent more from hatching while setting up traps to kill the gnats flying around.
How to use white vinegar to trap gnats
Making a trap to get rid of gnats in your residence is easy. You can add multiple ingredients depending on what you already have in your home. The first thing you'll need is a shallow bowl you don't care about because soon it'll be filled with dead fruit flies. You'll need 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar and 1 drop of liquid dish soap for the mixture. You can also use apple cider vinegar. Then you want to add a ¼ cup of sugar or any sweet fruit juice. Mix everything and add water until the container is almost full.
Now you can place it wherever your fruit flies are congregating. If you have a large infestation, consider making multiple and placing them around your home. The solution mimics the smell of fruits when they're too ripe and begin to ferment. This is what gnats love, so they fly into it. When they try to land on the vinegar, the layer of soap causes them to fall in and then traps them in the liquid, drowning them. While this is an excellent first step to getting rid of gnats, you need to clean your home too. Otherwise, they'll continue laying eggs that will hatch.
Use vinegar to prevent more gnats
It's essential to remove all the things that fruit flies love so they can't continue living in your home. A clean kitchen is the first place you should focus on since this room usually has everything they need to eat and lay eggs. You can start by washing your produce when you bring it home in case eggs are already on it. Then you can put them in the fridge. Try to wash your dishes as soon as possible and empty the scraps from the strainer in your sink because this is where gnats like to lay their eggs. Also, avoid keeping damp towels in your kitchen for the same reason.
You need to wipe down your countertops with a cleanser while keeping these items tidy. Distilled white vinegar is perfect for this because, without the added sugar, it's a natural bug-repellant. That way, the gnats won't want to land anywhere but in the traps. To mix your cleanser, grab a spray bottle and pour in 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. Then fill it up with water. You can even add a few drops of lavender essential oil to repel the fruit even more while leaving a pleasant scent in your home. Just remember to wipe up the cleanser after spraying it.