Gget the gnats ggone.

December 2, 2005 6:17 PM

Gnats in the kitchen - Help me get rid of these little annoyances ASAP.

In the kitchen my roommates and I share, a group of gnats has decided to take up residence in the vicinity of our compost bin. Previously in my life, you see a gnat or two, you clean up, and its overs. These guys, however, are not going away. We've cleaned the kitchen, cleaned up/out the compost bin multiple times, and done things like taken the bannanas off the counter, but the gnats keep coming back. Our current attempted solution: we've opened the kitchen window to the Canadian outdoors and are trying to freeze them to death. They have now moved to the top of the cupboards and have slowed down. But they aren't gone yet!
Does anyone have a quick solution? I'm having a dinner party tomorrow night and would rather be spared the embarrassment of a gnatty kitchen.

posted by thecjm to home & garden (13 comments total)

Put out a wine glass full of red wine. An hour later, a dozen or more of them are drowned in it. Pour into sink, rinse, repeat. Eventually you will run out of gnats.
posted by evariste at 6:21 PM on December 2, 2005

Nice tag!
posted by hardcode at 6:24 PM on December 2, 2005

Search really hard, there could be another source.
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:24 PM on December 2, 2005

This comes up a lot here. Search the archives. But most echo evariste.
posted by Alt F4 at 6:32 PM on December 2, 2005

do you have a garbage disposal in your sink? sometimes food can get lodged in it.

if you do, try plugging the drain, filling the sink with warm water, pulling the plug, and turning on the garbage disposal while the sink drains. keep the water and the disposal running for thirty or forty more seconds.
posted by clarahamster at 6:33 PM on December 2, 2005

Do you have a vacuum with a hose?

Suck them up!
posted by pithy comment at 6:35 PM on December 2, 2005

Search here and on the webs for drain flies. I bet that's where they are. Giving the sink a good cleaning (with some bleachy agent) usually makes them vanish right away. They've taken up residence in the drain, even though you might not see them going in and out of there.
posted by intermod at 6:35 PM on December 2, 2005

Are they gnats or fruitflies (is there some idiomatic difference Can/US)?

Just put out the fan you use for cooling in the summer; it'll suck 'em in and chop 'em up.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2005

Are you sure that they're gnats? We had drain flies for a while. They look like gnats to the untrained eye (like mine) but they aren't. They actually breed in your drains then they come out and fly all over the place, landing on computer screens, swarming around garbage cans, etc. You can kill every single one of them, then two days later they're back because the eggs in the drainpipes hatch and the babies crawl out.

We could temporarily solve the problem with Drain-O or large quantities of bleach in the drain - but even with these solutions they would return within a week or two.

Eventually we had to get an exterminator to come out. He used a special poison goop that coated the drain pipes and stuck there for several weeks. This solved the problem.

So - the moral of the story is: If you're really in a rush to kill these things, shell out fifty dollars for an exterminator... especially if you're not really sure what kind of creature you're dealing with.

Good luck.
posted by crapples at 6:43 PM on December 2, 2005

If you didn't have a "tomorrow" deadline, I'd further say buy a bugzooka.
posted by evariste at 6:52 PM on December 2, 2005

I saw a cool trick for dealing with gnats outdoors.

A friend of mine would juggle outside near dusk. When the gnats would come, he would take out his big cardboard rectangle one side of which he had coated with gelatin. Spray water (from spray bottle) on cardboard, making gelatin sticky like rubber cement. Raise hands over head to attract gnats to highest point. Then swish, swish, swish all gnats end up stuck to the cardboard.

It was amazingly effective, as it would have to be to work outside, where one would expect the gnat supply to be infinite. It may be good enough for your requested quick solution.
posted by Aknaton at 7:08 PM on December 2, 2005

I think my short-term solution will involve strategically placed red wine and flypaper in the morning. Thanks everyone for the ideas.
posted by thecjm at 8:28 PM on December 2, 2005

Oh and p.s. this is a belated American-in-Canada Thanksgiving dinner featuring a 28 lbs. turducken we just finished building. Come back to this thread Sunday morning and I should have pictures up.
posted by thecjm at 8:29 PM on December 2, 2005