I wasn’t trying it for house flies. We get little things I thought were fruit flies, but may be something else.
It has to be mentioned that you should not forget a drop of soap:
Add a drop of dish soap to the container with vinegar. The dish soap will break the surface tension of the apple cider vinegar, causing the fruit flies to sink when they land on it.
I also heard the recommendation to wipe the soap around the inside of the glass, so the flies can’t climb out. I don’t think I did either; just put a few ounces of vinegar in a glass and left it alone for a few days. It really worked well.
Edited to add, some sites suggest making a paper funnel so the flies can get in but not easily escape and I didn’t even bother with that.
I’ve had good luck removing fruit flies with a vinegar trap. (I add some fruit flavoring, which i bought a while ago, but tastes too fake to use.) I’ve also had decent luck catching house flies with old fashioned fly paper. It comes in rolls, and replacing (or removing) the roll of sticky paper covered in dead flies is kinda gross. But it’s cheap and non-toxic and low effort.
Ive had lots of fun with one of these in the past.
It’s clear you have no choice but to burn down the house.
We get those nasty fruit/sink trap flies. In Portland, the cider vinegar and soap thing worked well, but here in MSP they merely laugh while bathing in it. At least we don’t have billions of ants like we had in Portland. I had to go nuclear on the little fuckers.
I don’t know if they have all disappeared, but I have sat in the dark all afternoon with the door to the porch open and I haven’t seen one in a couple hours. It is getting quite dark outside (thunderstorms coming) so I will now close the porch door and turn on some lights.
Now I turned the lights on and have seen a couple flies, but far fewer than before.
While the vinegar traps work somewhat for the little flies we get in the kitchen, I’ve found that they like to alight on the ceiling. I stuck them up with the wand attachment of our vacuum and it really knocks down the population
Same here. Got one a few weeks ago, based on recommendations here, but the house flies ignore it. Has a nice pretty light, though. When the flies start getting slow after a few days, I zap them.
If I could trap a fly in a plastic cup, I wouldn’t need a trap.
If i have few enough flies to trap them manually (which i can do) i don’t have a fly problem.