Don’t you just hate it when you’re responding to the rare urge to bake a cake so you head for the pantry, only to discover tiny little creepers swimming in your bag of cake flour?

Rude – just absolutely rude.

But what’s often surprising about that situation is discovering that you’ve never before broken into the bag since you purchased it from the grocer. How did that happen?

Pests know how to get into the smallest holes or make some themselves, so their unwanted presence in your pantry items shouldn’t be a surprise. Also, these little critters know how to hitch a ride from processing plants to the grocery store to your home. Their instinct guides them to follow the food trail because your food is also their food.

Most of them are not dangerous – very few are disease-carriers, but who wants bugs in their food, right?

If you don’t want to deal with any more of these critters in your pantry items, your leading Modesto pest control company has the following tips for you to follow:

• If you see little beetles or other unidentifiable bugs in your box of ingredients, chuck away that box and check the other boxes or packages stored near it.

  To inspect for pantry pests in boxes or other dark packages, get a baking sheet, pour the ingredients onto the baking sheet and with a flashlight spot any critters moving around.

• Now, if you didn’t see any bugs in the ingredients, repack the ingredients in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer for three to four days. Doing this will kill off any insect eggs that may actually be present in the mix.

• Another solution to try is vacuuming your entire pantry and then washing the spaces down with soapy water to thoroughly get rid of spills and dust. A clean space is known to repel most insects.

In order to prevent a future infestation, go through your pantry items quickly because the longer products stay in your pantry, the higher the likelihood of infestation. Since bugs can proliferate quickly in the ideal conditions inside ingredient boxes, it’s best to purchase products in package sizes that you can go through easily.

Also, invest in airtight containers where you can transfer everything from flour, to pasta, to rice, to nuts, to dried fruit into. These are better than the original boxes and packages of ingredients; if they can seal out air, there’s a high chance that they can keep insects out as well.

If pest infestations continue despite your preventive measures, get help from your trusted pest control team before the situation gets more serious.