How to Keep Pests Out of Your Dinner Ingredients
You’re in the mood to bake. You take out the flour, the sugar, the salt, and a few other ingredients and get ready to place them in a large plastic bowl. You mix the flour and water together and start to pour in a little bit of sugar. But when you pour out the sugar, something else comes out. It looks a little like a tiny Rice Krispie, but upon closer inspection, you realize it’s not food. It’s a maggot, and as you look through your sugar you see that there are a lot of these little maggots lying dead in your box of sugar.
Bugs Get Into Food
It’s not uncommon to find pests invading your pantry, getting into all of your cooking ingredients. Sugar, of course, is one of the most common pest targets, but they may also invade honey, vanilla extract, and anything else that satisfies their sweet tooth. They may even invade salts and other foods they do not even like, only to die inside during the exploration and ruin your ingredients forever.
Tips to Keep Bugs Out
The best way to keep pests out of your food is to ensure that they’re eliminated outdoors. That’s why it’s important to call green pest solutions if you live in the Philadelphia tri-state area and get a quarterly pest control service to ensure pests stay away. However, there are also several strategies you can also use yourself to keep pests out of your cupboards, including: Cleaning Cabinets, Clutter, and Messes.
- Cleaning Cabinets, Clutter, and Messes
Pests don’t usually come into your home to get into your sugar. They often invade because your cabinets have messes and spills that attract them. It’s only after they start to swarm that they get into your boxes. That’s why once every few weeks, make sure you wipe down your cabinets completely and clean up after any spills or messes that may attract bugs.
- Plastic Bag Your Items
Anything that pests are known to get into should be placed inside of a sealed plastic bag. This will prevent any scents from attracting pests and make it much harder for them to get in. While pests are excellent at fitting into small spaces, a sealed plastic bag is much less likely to get their attention.
- Put High Risk Items in the Fridge
You may also want to consider placing any item that is at high risk for an insect attack in the refrigerator. Most pests will avoid cool places, and so even if they smell something delicious in your refrigerator, they are very unlikely to try to enter. Refrigerators also tend to be air tight and make it much more difficult for pests to invade.
Keeping Pests Out of Your Meal
It’s stressful when pests get into your food, because usually you are in the process of cooking before you discover it. The best strategy will always be prevention, because unless you keep insects away from your home it is difficult to guarantee you can keep them out of your food. But with the above tips, you should be able to see a significant decrease in the number of ants, flies, and other pests that tend to invade cabinets and ruin both your meals and your appetites.
If you are looking for preventative pest control solutions in the Pennsylvania tri-state area, contact Green Pest today for $50 off of your first treatment.