A Pain In The.....Gnat!

Nothing beats the terrifying feeling of walking into your house after a short vacation and seeing your kitchen covered in gnats. I should first state that I hate bugs… no despise bugs. I don’t mind them outside, but I do not want them in my home. So seeing my kitchen filled with gnats (my favorite room in the house), I panicked. I immediately grabbed a kitchen towel and tried to take down the swarm of gnats. If anyone has ever tried to fight off gnats, you know this technique does not provide results.

After realizing I was just moving the gnats around and not actually getting rid of them, I did what I should have done first and found the source. Low and behold I forgot to take out my compostable waste before leaving on vacation. This provided the gnats with a hearty location for a gnat hotel. As clean as composting is on the back end, gnats are often a side effect of compostable waste. However, they can be avoided with a few simple steps. For backyard composting be sure to collect only fruits and vegetables for your compost bin and remember to dig a small hole in your pile and bury every fresh batch from your kitchen. For commercial composting, I recommend having an outside container with a lid that you store all organic waste. I keep a small container in my kitchen that I empty on a daily basis into the outdoor bin. Then I empty the outdoor bin once a week. The process should eliminate any gnat problem that may arise in your house.

If you do happen to come home to a gnat filled kitchen, I have just the solution for you. Find an empty spaghetti jar or anything lying around that has a sealed lid. Poke small holes in the lid with a sharp object. Make sure the holes are not too large or too small. They should be about the size of a gnat. Fill the jar with about _ a cup of cider vinegar, about a tablespoon of sugar and about º a cup of water. Seal the lid on the jar and place it in a central location of the gnats. The mixture will attract the gnats into the jar, but they will not be able to get back out. Word to the wise… close every door and window in your house. The first time I tried this, I realized the mixture was working so well it was attracting gnats from outside into the house. Within a couple hours to a day all of the gnats will be gone!