2. Keep Your Kitchen Clean and Do Not Leave Leftovers Out Keep your kitchen counters and floors clean. If there is a spill, clean it up immediately. This removes the incentive for pests to come inside—to find food and water. The cleaner your kitchen, the less likely you are to have unwelcome visitors. This may surprise you, but steel wool is extremely effective in preventing mice and other rodents from entering your home. Its properties make it an ideal barrier against unwanted pests. Mice and rats are unable to chew through high-grade steel wool, so stuffing it tightly into cracks, holes, and other entryways, repels these rodents. Make sure to use high-grade steel wool only and wear gloves while touching it as it can cause irritation and even injury. Combining the steel wool with a sealant such as caulk or foam makes it even more difficult for pests to get through. Steel wool is also effective at keeping out insects when used to fill cracks around doors, windows, and pipes. While it’s still important to keep your kitchen clean, bugs may get in without your knowledge. I think we’ve all opened a box of pasta to find to our horror there are little brown or black bugs floating in the cooking water. These bugs are flour beetles and may have entered the food package at the manufacturing site, in transport, or at the grocery store. It is also common to find grain moths in unopened bags of flour.
3. Thoroughly Inspect All Grain Products Before Bringing Them into Your Home Do yourself a favor and check any packages or grocery items for signs of pests before bringing them into your home. Insects love to tag along with food as their key to getting inside your warm, secure abode. If you find flour beetles in one package of food, they have also likely infested similar items. To find out, dump the contents of unopened boxes into a large clear bowl—plastic or glass. This will enable you to see the bugs clearly and you can throw the ruined food away.
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