Both live and dead flies can end up in places we don’t often clean and become an eyesore or headache, depending on the situation. Dead flies stuck in out-of-the-way and hard-to-reach places look gross and can attract other pests that are looking for food.
Key Points:
- Flies can become trapped in window blinds as they are attracted by heat and light.
- Cleaning techniques such as dusting, using an air duster, or a vacuum cleaner should be used in order to remove the fly.
- Sealing all windows tightly and using plants that naturally repel insects can help discourage flies from entering blinds.
Live flies stuck in a window blind, or other blind fabric will buzz all day long until it finally dies from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration.
As hard as it is to keep pests out of window screens, blinds, and curtains, nothing is more annoying than seeing flies, insect legs, and other dead insects in the window blinds.
Understanding what draws pests to windows and how to keep flies out of blinds can help avoid common insect problems like excrement on windows and other nasty additions to the piece of fabric or plastic around your glass windows. Read on to stop flies from getting stuck in your blinds.
What Causes Flies to Get Trapped in Blinds?
Flies that get trapped in blinds usually are attracted by heat or light. Whether larger windows or dialog window flies will feel any leak or air temperature difference and may be attracted to that. Once there, outside flies may come inside looking for food residue or driven by the scent of food.
Flies that were already indoors may also enter these gaps, trying to escape outside but end up trapped in the vinyl or synthetic fabric blinds. Once stuck flies, the insect in question, as well as most other members of the insect kingdom, will be unable to find their way out as temperatures change and the path they came in disappears.
How to Clean Blinds with Stuck Flies?
It is generally best to use the gentlest approach possible to clean things like blinds, and starting with a feather duster or microfibre dusters can usually knock most dead insects out of the fabric layers and loops of fabric in blinds and curtains.
For sheer fabric loops and a type of window with a delicate fabric surface, gentle dusting is the only way to get the insect in question out of popular window shadings that could be damaged by more intense removal methods.
If simply dusting doesn’t take care of the problem, then plastic and vinyl blinds can be cleaned with a compressed air duster approach or a long-handled duster approach combined with a high-powered vacuum. Make sure to use a type of vacuum cleaner that has attachments to make it easier to clean food scraps and other pest attractants into your durable window shading.
Places Flies Get Stuck
Window blinds aren’t the only places flies get stuck and need a duster or vacuum to reach; these pests can fall inside furniture, in baskets and pots and pans, or any other place that may not get regular dusting and attention.
Different kinds of sheer fabric stripes or a swathe of fabric that is full of insects but sensitive to heat, you will need to remove the stuck flies with a duster, whereas heavy-duty furniture upholstery can be blasted with hair dryers, air dusters, and vacuums to pick up flies. Check out the places bugs go and how to remove them below.
| Place | Why Flies Get Stuck | How to Remove Flies |
| Gaps Behind Wall Hangings | Flies crawl somewhere to hide and sometimes get stuck in places where they cannot move out of | Dust behind or remove and clean pictures and mirrors on walls near windows and insect entry points |
| Spaces in between Glass and Screens | Flies come inside or try to go out through windows and often get caught between the glass and the screen; when the window has a gap, they hit the screen and fly up, getting wedged between them with no way out | Open the window all the way, pop out the screen, or use a vacuum or air duster to suck/blast the fly out of the gap between the window glass and the screen |
| Window Ledges | On high window ledges, flies will rest and die if they have reached the end of their lives; if you do not clean these spots regularly, the build-up of fly corpses can attract more pests and lead to potential infestations | Regularly clean window ledges and use some form of disinfectant to repel insects and keep areas of your home clean and pest free |
| Behind Furniture and in Cushions | Insects like flies will often crawl into furniture to hide or to find food but can die or get stuck inside easily, leading to more insect-attracting debris in your furniture | Remove cushions and clean behind furniture at least once a month to ensure no build-up of pests, alive or dead, has occurred, and if there are signs of flies, clean it immediately and spray a fly repellent |
| Baskets and Open Decorations | Highly positioned decorations like baskets and glassware are easy targets for flies to get trapped in and end up dying inside of or around; when this happens, you will need to reach these decorations to clean them | Choose decorations that have no openings or use repelling products that will keep pests away from hard-to-reach ornaments around the home |
What Harm Can Come from Flies in Stuck Blinds?
Flies stuck in blinds can create tears, they are annoying, and in most cases, will never escape, so removing the fly can free it or at least put it out of its misery. If you try to remove flies stuck in blinds using the wrong method, you could destroy the aesthetics of the blinds and even affect the way they function.
Always try to remove flies with light dusting before moving to hair dryers, air dusters, or vacuum cleaners that can damage the blinds and spread fly corpse debris around the room
How to Discourage Flies from Entering Blinds?
It is best to discourage flies from entering your blinds by making sure windows are sealed tightly and leak-free and there are no gaps or holes in the screen. If flies have no way to get in, then it is far less likely that they will be able to get stuck in your blinds.
Growing plants that naturally repel flies in window areas, like lavender and mint, can also reduce the number of these pests trying to enter your home. Fly-repellent sprays can also be used around the home to keep them from wanting to enter in the first place and mask the scent of food that usually draws bugs in.
If you discourage flies from coming around your home, you can stop flies from getting stuck in your blinds once and for all.
