Stop Fruit Flies With This Dollar Tree Countertop Storage Hack For Tomatoes

You've been storing your tomatoes all wrong if you're leaving them out in the open. Fruit flies don't just appear out of nowhere. Your produce on the table is a direct invitation, especially in the warm weather of late summer and early fall, when fruit flies are most active. Coincidentally, this time of year also lines up with the canning season, when garden harvests and farm-fresh produce are abundant. So, you should know better than to leave your precious harvest lying around, serving as a delectable feast for these pesky bugs. Better idea? Put your tomatoes in paper lunch bags from Dollar Tree and use them as needed!

DT's Brown Paper Lunch Bags come in at just $1.50 for a pack of 30 bags, making them pretty inexpensive for this purpose. Since the simplest way to not invite fruit flies is to not keep tomatoes exposed in large quantities, these bags will help you do exactly that while storing them on your countertop. Plus, you won't have to worry about rotten fruit fueling a fruit-fly infestation. Further, fruit flies are crafty and you can unwittingly bring them into your home as eggs or larvae on produce, especially if it's already ripe or damaged. So, rinsing and bagging your tomatoes is a great way of denying them free reign over your kitchen.

Washing produce and removing any overripe, fermenting, or rotting tomatoes from the bunch can help eliminate fruit flies' breeding sites. But here's what you should know about washing produce: Rinse them using cold, running water and avoid hot water, as it might induce thermal shock in the tomatoes, which would make them soak up the water and bacteria. Then, dry the washed tomatoes using a towel and leave them on a clean tray to air dry completely. Afterward, simply place them in the Dollar Tree paper lunch bags and leave them on your kitchen counter or island. Since fruit flies are attracted to ripening produce, the bag puts a barrier between them and your tomatoes, keeping the latter safe for consumption.

The bag also traps the ethylene gas that fruits release as they mature, which speeds up ripening. So, check your tomato bags every day and pull out whatever seems ripe. Consume them immediately if possible, or place them in the fridge where they can keep for three to five days. While this method will keep flies off your tomatoes, it won't deal with the ones already hovering in your kitchen. To eliminate them from your household, trap fruit flies with little more than an ordinary glass jar and beer.