Your Complete Guide for Preventing Kitchen Pantry Pests

The last time you were cleaning your kitchen pantry, there was a bug or two in there. You thought it was gross, but then again, it had been a while since you had last gone through the pantry. Then not so long after, you came home to an absolute infestation in your pantry. You took care of your pest problem, but you never want to go through that again. How do you keep pantry pests out of the kitchen?

Try these methods for preventing kitchen pantry pests:

• Know the foods that pantry pests are attracted to
• Store those foods in airtight containers with lids
• Keep a clean kitchen, but be aware this alone is not enough
• Maintain a dark, dry, cool environment in the pantry
• If your food packaging is damaged, transfer the food to another container or remove it
• Toss any food after four months or use it very soon
• The moment you see a bug, remove it and throw away whatever food it was in

In this complete guide, you’ll learn about the different types of pantry pests as well as which foods they like to eat. Through the above prevention methods, your pantries are about to be the cleanest and most bug-free they’ve ever been!

Is the name pantry pest just a catchy way of referring to bugs? While it would be nice if that were the case, no. Pantry pests are their own type of insect. They love to get into your food and make their homes there. 

Here is an overview of the types of pantry pests most frequently spotted in kitchens.

Cigarette Beetles

The Anobiidae or cigarette beetle (also known as the drugstore beetle) is practically microscopic at 3 millimeters. This small, round, brown-colored bug can get into your home easily, and not only through your food, either. Any foundational cracks, open windows, or unsealed doorways give cigarette beetles the keys to your kingdom. These pests then invade your pantry and burrow deep into your food.

Saw-Toothed Grain Beetles

A second beetle that’s considered a pantry pest is the saw-toothed grain beetle or Oryzaephilus surinamensis. You might wish this beetle was microscopic due to its prominent and scary saw teeth. According to Orkin, the saw-toothed grain beetle may have as many as six of these protrusions.

If these beetles are allowed to reach adulthood, they could venture out of your pantry and reach different areas of your home.

Indian Meal Moths

From beetles to moths, the Indian meal moth in the Pyralidae family is also nicknamed the weevil moth. They, like many other kitchen pantry pests, get into your home courtesy of hitching a ride in your grocery bags.

When these moths are in the larvae stage, they resemble caterpillars with a white and pink body. As adults, they’re brown flying bugs that are pretty difficult to miss.

Red Flour Beetles

Another beetle to acquaint yourself with is the red flour beetle. This insect grows to a size of 4 millimeters. Despite their name, these beetles may be brown instead of red. The unsettling thing about red flour beetles is they can get into food when it’s still in the warehouse and survive all the way until that food is in your kitchen pantry.

Rice Weevils

Beware the Sitophilus oryzae or rice weevil as well, which likes rice as well as other crops. These small black or brown bugs have spots that cover their wing covers. Rice weevils and maize weevils are often confused for one another though, which is fair considering how similar the two weevils look.

The good news is that as terrifying as pantry pests are, none can really cause harm to you.

You’ll definitely want to double down on your prevention methods to keep the above pests far away from your home. Here is more info on the prevention methods outlined in the intro.

It’s hard to get proactive in combating kitchen pantry pests if you’re not sure what to do first. You might wish to begin by safeguarding the foods that are the most frequent targets of these pests.

That list is rather exhaustive, so make sure you keep track of all these foods:



• Pet Food
• Animal-Based Products
• Dried Fruit
• Rice
• Spices
• Coffee Beans
• Cereal
• Seeds
• Grains
• Pasta
• Flour

When you get back from the grocery store, open the original packaging of these foods. If you want to be especially careful, you might dump the contents of the food onto a baking sheet or baking tray and sift through it.

 

After your inspection, put each food group into a container made of plastic, metal, or glass. The containers should include a lid, which can then secure to the container to provide an airtight seal. As teeny-tiny as the pantry pests in the above section are, they can’t get into airtight containers.

Did you know that cleanliness has very little to do with whether you’ll get kitchen pantry pests? Remember, these insects like your food, not your kitchen itself. They won’t say no to a dark, enclosed environment but even the most sparkling kitchen, cleaned by a professional can fall victim to pantry pests.



That said, you cannot get lax in your kitchen cleaning routine if you’ve had bugs before, as a dirty kitchen certainly won’t help you keep pests away.

Maintaining ideal pantry conditions can be quite effective in preventing another potential infestation. The best pantry conditions are dark, dry, and cool. Your food won’t spoil prematurely when you prioritize a comfortable pantry like this.

You see it all the time when you’re shopping at the grocery store. Your favorite snack crackers are in a crunched box or that bag of potatoes looks a little thin in one corner. If you’re in a rush when you’re shopping, you might not even notice the condition of the packaging until you bring the food home. In other cases, you know the packaging is in poor condition, but you feel like you have no other choice because that’s the last bag of potatoes or box of crackers.

It’s not such a big deal, you tell yourself. After all, it’s just the packaging that’s bad, not the food itself, right? Not yet, at least.

Remember, most kitchen pantry pests are several millimeters in size. To give you a size comparison, a penny is 19.05 millimeters and these bugs are 1 to 3 millimeters. They’re so much smaller than even a penny. They need only the tiniest opening in the packaging to get into your food. When you buy food with damaged packaging, you’re practically inviting pantry pests into your home and your kitchen.



From now on, be more diligent about the condition of food packaging when shopping. You want packaging in pristine condition with no rips, tears, holes, or openings. To take care of the food already in your pantry, transfer it to airtight containers or throw it out if you believe that it may have been damaged.

As Food Network notes, when food spends more and more time in your pantry, the likelihood of that food attracting pests goes up. Bugs aren’t too discerning about expired versus unexpired foods, so you have to be.

A good rule of thumb to follow is to dump everything in your pantry after four months unless you soon plan to use it. Do make sure that you actually use the food and don’t forget about it.

When you shop while keeping that four-month deadline in mind, you’ll learn to buy groceries more smartly. This can reduce how much money you waste throwing out old food that you accidentally left in the pantry way past its expiration date.

Preventing pantry pests requires continued diligence. Sometimes life will happen and you’ll forget to clean the pantry for a few months. That might coincide with the same time that you spot a small bug wriggling around in your bag of rice or cereal. Always be prepared just in case.

Kitchen pantry pests are lured to the foods you bring into the house from the grocery store. They like to wriggle into damaged packaging or through the holes, gaps, and openings of your home. Now that you have a detailed guide on how to stop kitchen pantry pests, your days of a bug-free kitchen are just beginning.

Sources

• https://www.orkin.com/other/beetles/sawtooth-grain-beetle
• https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/packages/kitchen-fixes/everything-about-pantry-pests