Besides the obvious reasons for keeping your kitchen area clean – such as looking presentable and killing germs – there is another important reason: to prevent bugs from settling in.
Bugs in the Cupboard
If you are in the habit of letting your cupboards go for months without cleaning, think again. The food particles that build up over time can create a perfect environment for certain insects to live in. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure as far as bugs go.
Don’t take our word for it, here’s a story shared by one of our readers:
On a hot summer day, my son wanted to make lemon jello popsicles. I got him to open the package to get things started, but he didn’t get very far – the package had a whole bunch of tiny bugs crawling all over it.
He showed me and I was shocked! I hadn’t seen any sign of bugs in our cabinets at all. But there must have been 20 little critters crawling on the package. You could hardly see these insects – they were about 1 millimeter long and extremely thin. It looked more like a little pencil mark than a living creature, except that they moved pretty quickly.
Instead of making popsicles, we switched tasks and started looking closely at our cabinets and their contents. And sure enough – there they were; dozens of bugs crawling around the shelves.
Things got worse. We opened other packages to see if they were infested and they were. They seemed to really like cardboard boxes to live in. Every unopened box had some – our boxes of Kraft dinner, all the boxes of Jello and pudding, cake mixes and more. They are so tiny they can apparently squirm through the folds where the cardboard is glued. We couldn’t believe it! One day there was nothing, the next there were bugs everywhere! We threw out all the opened packages and unopened boxed packages of food and thoroughly cleaned the inside of the cabinets with a bleach and water solution. We thought we had things under control, but no luck.
My husband noticed that one of the boxes that were contaminated was previously in a different cabinet. Not what I wanted to hear!! On close inspection of the other cabinet, there were many living there too. More food thrown out, more cleaning done. I banged on the shelves to make sure there weren’t any guys hiding anywhere. Ok, now we are good, I thought.
We left to buy replacements for some of the food we had thrown out. When we came back we were in for another shock. More bugs!! Apparently these guys are smart enough to hide when things are being banged around. Once the room was quiet and the cabinet was shut and dark, they came out to look for food. Argggg!! How do you get rid of the bugs hiding in tiny cracks?!!
We ended up taking the cabinets out to the garage, removing the shelves, sealing them with varnish, putting everything back together and caulking the cracks to keep any bugs from hiding there.
After doing a bit of research, we think they were tiny grain beetles (scientific name: Oryzaephilus). They eat mainly grain based foods. We read that throwing everything out and cleaning thoroughly is the best way to get rid of them. Even after you do that, some of the eggs might hatch, so you don’t want to leave any food or any packages around that they can get into. Otherwise you will have the same problem starting all over again. One site suggested putting un-infested opened bags of food in the freezer for at least 48 hours to kill any eggs that might be present. But we threw everything out – the thought of eating dead bug eggs in our food just wasn’t very appetizing.
Once you’ve cleaned everything and put all your food into sealed containers, you aren’t guaranteed that you’ll never get them again. The bugs can infest packages of food with very tiny openings (something like 0.4 mm) and can come home with you from the supermarket. But if you keep your cupboards clean and your food sealed, they won’t have a chance to spread. Without a food source they will die of hunger.
So take my advice and don’t give the bugs a chance to live in your cupboards in the first place. It isn’t worth it to let shelves get dirty with food particles. Believe me, it is a real hassle to get rid of them once they have spread. Besides, keeping things clean and sealed is a good thing for your home. Good luck and I hope you never get grain beetles or any other type of bugs in your cabinets!!