Flies stay away from your home thanks £1.30 method that ‘really works’

Flies love the smell of food, bins and other smelly things you might find around your home – especially during late summer and early autumn when they seek warmth as temperatures start to drop. Having flies around the house isn’t just annoying, but they can also spread bacteria and disease.

While it’s always a good idea to eliminate the food sources and spillages flies are attracted to with regular cleaning, there might be other times you need a bit of help. You don’t need to fork out a lot of money when it comes to deterring flies, as one woman has found out.

Online content creator Jemma recently heard about a hack from her sister, and decided to try it out herself. Posting to her @jemma..w account, she revealed she had learned flies hate lemon and cloves. Sharing the message she had received from her sister, it said: “I saw this online as a fly deterrent – lemon and cloves. There are four flies buzzing around the dog bowls and as soon as I put this down, they all left! They said you can use a lemon you’ve already squeezed. Flies don’t like citrus and cloves.”

Jemma decided to cut half a lemon, put it in a bowl, and poke cloves into it. She decided to try it out by putting it outside by her cat’s food bowl, which flies would normally be “all over”.

She observed a fly that came near the bowl, but didn’t sit on it, which it would have normally done. After watching it for a while, Jemma was impressed, as “every time a fly got near it, they flew away”.

And Jemma wasn’t the only one who had tried the tip and was impressed by it. “It works. I tried it,” said one person. Others couldn’t wait to try it out for themselves.

Lemons are typically available for as little as 30p each, for example in Tesco. Meanwhile, cloves can be purchased in the same supermarket for £1, so trying it out doesn’t have to cost you more than £1.30.

The effectiveness of this method depends on the freshness, as once the lemon has dried out, it will stop to work. Once the lemon loses its strong scent, you can replace it with a new one.

Lifestyle gardener Nancy Birtwhistle also spoke about the hack on This Morning. She said: “They [flies] hate the smell of citrus and they hate the smell of cloves”. Speaking of how she usually keeps half a lemon with cloves in the conservatory, she added: “My husband just didn’t believe this until he saw a fly come in, see this, turn around and fly out.”

Keely Smith, Interior designer at JD Elite interiors, told Ideal Home: “Flies are incredibly sensitive to scent. Lemons release limonene, which is a strong citrus compound that interferes with the way flies find food. When you stick cloves into the lemon, you’re adding eugenol, which has a sharp, almost spicy scent that flies dislike even more.”

Other repellents includes herbs such as basil, mint or lavender. You can leave pots of these near doors and windows. Or you can use essential oils like with eucalyptus, citronella or lemongrass.

You should also remove anything that attracts the flies by cleaning up food and making sure there are no crumbs on the counter. Make sure the bins are covered, and store ripe fruit in the fridge.