diff --git a/tests/conftest.py b/tests/conftest.py
index 0bb69dae6d7..edf0ee05099 100644
--- a/tests/conftest.py
+++ b/tests/conftest.py
@@ -129,11 +129,8 @@ def tmpdir_factory(request, tmpdir_factory):
     """
     yield tmpdir_factory
     if not request.config.getoption("--keep-tmpdir"):
-        # py.path.remove() uses str paths on Python 2 and cannot
-        # handle non-ASCII file names. This works around the problem by
-        # passing a unicode object to rmtree().
         shutil.rmtree(
-            str(tmpdir_factory.getbasetemp()),
+            tmpdir_factory.getbasetemp(),
             ignore_errors=True,
         )
 
@@ -155,10 +152,7 @@ def tmpdir(request, tmpdir):
     # This should prevent us from needing a multiple gigabyte temporary
     # directory while running the tests.
     if not request.config.getoption("--keep-tmpdir"):
-        # py.path.remove() uses str paths on Python 2 and cannot
-        # handle non-ASCII file names. This works around the problem by
-        # passing a unicode object to rmtree().
-        shutil.rmtree(str(tmpdir), ignore_errors=True)
+        tmpdir.remove(ignore_errors=True)
 
 
 @pytest.fixture(autouse=True)