A Step-by-Step Guide for Pantry Pest Prevention

Discovering that your kitchen pantry has been overrun by pests is reviling! You got rid of the offending culprits, but you want to prevent future recurrences. How do you keep pests out of your kitchen pantry for good?

Here are some quick and easy steps to follow:

• Keep Your Pantry Clean
• Use What You Buy
• Only Purchase Food With Undamaged Packaging
• Store Loose Food and Snacks in Airtight Containers

With these tips, your kitchen pantry can stay spick and span so you don’t have to deal with the horrors of earwigs, moths, ants, or beetles! Keep reading for actionable steps to take today.

You just went through the upsetting experience of removing insects from your kitchen. Before you put everything right back where it came from all over again, take the time to give your pantry a deep cleaning up and down, inside, and out.

Wipe down every shelf, every corner, and every crevice. Products with vinegar as the main ingredient will ward off insects like ants, says HGTV, as the tiny, multi-legged bugs detest the bitter smell. 

Gnats, on the other hand, are attracted to vinegar. You can combine it with dish soap to make a gnat-killing trap should a few bugs fly into your home. Set the trap on your kitchen counter so the gnats can’t get anywhere near your pantry.

Clean your counters once every three months moving forward.

This tip might sound obvious, but it’s so important in maintaining the bug-free status of your kitchen pantry. The rule to follow here is that the first thing that goes in your pantry should be the first to be eaten.

The less time food spends in your pantry, the better. That’s doubly true once you open the packaging. Make sure that you and your family get into a habit of properly sealing opened packages and closing the pantry doors when not in use.

Since you just spent the time cleaning out your pantry, research the best organizers for storing canned goods, boxes, packages, wine bottles, and bags of food.

If you had bugs in your kitchen pantry, clearly you wondered how they got in. More than likely, the insects hitched a ride onto the food you bought while it was still in your grocery store shopping cart.

The grocery products that bugs are most attracted to include "cured meats, tea, powdered milk, spices, dried fruits, chocolate, nuts, seeds, and cereal products", notes the University of Minnesota Extension.

If you’re buying those items, you need to thoroughly inspect them at both the grocery store and at home. While you’re standing under the bright fluorescent lights of the candy or pasta aisle, look closely at every package. Turn each product over so you can see it from all sides.

Is the box torn anywhere? Does the bag look ripped or like it’s about to tear? Do you see any small holes? Even teeny-tiny openings can be large enough for insects like ants to enter, and then it’s all downhill from there.

When you bring your food home, give it a once-over again. Not all pantry pests are easy to detect with the naked eye, but if they are and they’re skittering across your food, you’ll certainly notice them.

Rather than flick the bugs off, you’re better off going back to the grocery store, explaining the situation, and seeing if you can get a refund. If there’s one bug in your food, you have no idea how many more could be hiding in the box or package!

Although pantry pests are little, they’re mighty. They’re not always deterred by foil, paper, and cardboard. If an insect eats through these materials–which many will–then they’ve created an entry into your food where there was none before. Thus, your pest problem could begin all over again.

When bringing home any of the snacks that most attract pests, transfer them to food storage containers. It doesn’t matter so much if the containers are made of plastic, metal, or glass. Just make sure they have airtight lids.

It’s very distressing to find pests roaming around in your food packages. Once they’re gone, maintaining a pantry cleaning regimen every three months is one of your best defenses against pests. You also want to check food packaging, both at the grocery store and at home, and buy some airtight food containers for nuts and seeds, cereals, and other loose food. Good luck!