What did your parents refrigerate? Mine refrigerated bread.

Refrigerating bananas pretty much stops them ripening, so if you have some fully yellow bananas you can pop then in the fridge and it will stop them from over ripening for a few days. The peel will still go brown but the flesh remains as it was when you put them in. You definitely shouldn't put green bananas in the fridge, but with yellows it buys you some time.

I used to work at the fruits and vegetables section of a supermarket, we didnt put them in the fridge cause for some reason once you take them out of it they ripen way faster than they would if kept at room temp.

Freezing them changes the chemistry and they stop working for my fruit fly traps when fruit flies are around.

Pretty sure I remember a recipe video for banana cream pie that b one of the steps was freezing the bananas. Also used extremely ripened ones.
- Yus! They’re super not bad to freeze, it just changes their chemical construction a bit. I use frozen bananas for smoothies, and super overripe brown bananas for banana bread! Fruit flies just hate frozen bananas, so you can’t use them for fly traps.
Maybe they stop working for your fruit flies because they don't have access to your fridge? Edit: oh wait you make specific banana based traps?
- Yeah! Put 2-3cm of apple cider vinegar into a jar, and slice up bananas (i put strawberries in there too so they don’t have to eat the same thing every day.) then roll a cone out of hard paper or thin cardboard. Tape it to the top of the jar, so the cone’s tip goes about 1-2cm from the vinegar (the bananas and whatnot should be slightly protruding from the vinegar.) The wide end of the cone should be wider than the mouth of the jar, sealed up with tape around the jar’s mouth.
  Fruit flies CANNOT resist it. Within a day there will be no more flies in your house, and the jar you’ve made will be a fruit fly fuckfest paradise. The vinegar attracts them and makes the fruit not rot, so the trap you put in the basement and forgot about for months won’t get all stinky.
  Edit: oh yeah the original question! Yeah if you use frozen bananas, the fruit flies hate them hahaha
  
  So the tip is inside and not touching the vinegar (there is a 1-2 cm distance between the tip and vinegar?), right? How wide is the opening on the tip? And can't the flies (at least some) fly out of it again back through the same opening?
  I've also heard something about adding a splash of soap so that they fall into the water, can that help?
  I've tried traps like that but mostly just with vinegar and a drop of dish soap (and no fancy cone installation) but somehow my flies ignored it. Or never fell into it I don't know. So now I refrigerate all my fruit (even the exotic ones) in the summertime :( I'll be happy to give it a try. Can it be normal vinegar though?
  
  Yeah! The tip never touches the vinegar, and you can move it around a bunch because the sloshing vinegar never touches the cone tip. The flies can’t get back out from the cone tip, they don’t understand how it works. I used to have a dirty roommate and have used this trap tons of times when he’d leave empty beer bottles and stuff around.
  I’ve also heard of soap! I’ve never tried it though, because this fruit fuck paradise trap works amazingly and is fascinating.
  There’s an example here, but i have perfected it by using slightly thicker paper, trimming the cone 2cm above the jar’s lid for aesthetics, putting fruit slices in there, and making the cone’s tip much smaller (maybe 5mm to 1cm wide at the tip.)
  It never fails. It’s amazing. And once they’re in full fuckfest mode and larvae start to spawn, it’s fascinating.
  Edit: you absolutely want apple cider vinegar. Red wine vinegar or actual wine might also work, but apple cider is what I have had AMAZING success with.

Makes me gag to think of.