Gnats, Gnats, Go Away - and never come back!!

Ever since we had peaches in the house this summer, we've had a constant supply of fruit gnats in the house as well. Sometimes more than others, especially if some new fruit (pears lately) appeared, or a dirty dish was left out for them to graze upon. I've gotten pretty good at killing them by smacking them with my hand while they're landed on the cupboard doors (or somewhere with a hard surface!), but it was obvious that they were multiplying faster than I could kill them off.

And they were getting on my nerves big time. And getting more so as time went on and they were just sticking around!!

I tried the "vinegar/soap" in a dish thing - ha, that didn't work at all. Then I heard about this, and was still a little skeptical of it, but decided I was being aggravated by them enough to try it!

Last night after killing several of them, I pulled out an empty jar, and asked Daniel if he would make a paper funnel for me (I was in the middle of canning pear-butter and trying to get supper made). He did, and we put it in the jar - then realized we had to put the vinegar in first! Duh! So we untaped the paper carefully, and put in some vinegar, and put the paper funnel back in. Within just a minute or two, we had our first victim, and by the end of the evening we had quite a few!
You just put a little vinegar (I used Apple Cider Vinegar) in the jar, then put the funnel on top. We made the hole pretty small, about the size of a pencil. Then we used masking tape to tape around the rim of the jar to prevent them from sneaking out that way since it wasn't a completely crack-free fit. Supposedly once they get in, they can't figure out how to get back out. Daniel taped the seam in the funnel in a couple places, I would recommend taping it the whole way just in case!

Now I'm trying to figure out how I can successfully kill them and not just take the jar outside and release them to come back in my house or go pester somebody else. I'm also not 100% sure that a few of them haven't escaped as I hadn't seen any gnats this morning.... then later I killed two. So I need to figure out my plan of action and get actin'.

Anyways, I'm sure that several of you have these pesky things in your house, too, so I wanted to pass along what seems to really be workin' for me!!

Ahh... the joys of a kitchen that is gnat free....