If an
Indian meal moth or other pest contaminates food in your pantry or kitchen, you could be looking at throwing out a significant amount of food. Instead, it’s best to know how to prevent bugs in the kitchen, along with rodents.
These critters can be lurking in your kitchen, feasting on exposed food, trash, and even your pet’s food. If you don’t want bugs in the kitchen or don’t wish to share your meal with a mouse or cockroach, then you need to take pest prevention seriously.
Pests carry diseases, and when they enter your kitchen, you’re potentially exposing your family to a host of foodborne illnesses. Some common kitchen bugs are ants, cockroaches, house flies, fruit flies, silverfish, weevils, rice weevils, flour mites, drain flies, and grain beetles.
If you have an infestation already, a professional pest removal service in Sussex County, NJ, can help remove any bugs. But you can still work to keep your kitchen pest-free.
Dangers of Pests in the Kitchen
You may not realize it, but pests in the kitchen can cause serious issues, including foodborne illnesses. Harmful bacteria are transmitted by bugs and rodents, so it’s important to prevent pests from entering your home. When they infest your kitchen, they spread their saliva around, along with urine and droppings.
This is how diseases are transmitted. Diseases are also transmitted through a rodent’s feet and fur, which can lead to E. coli and salmonella exposure. The result is commonly food poisoning.
Other kitchen bugs, such as
house flies, can transmit more than 100 pathogens. Additionally, rodents in the kitchen can lead to tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme disease.
Keep Food in Sealed Containers
You’re probably wondering how to keep bugs out of the food pantry. For starters, invest in sealed containers. This works to eliminate a pest’s food source, protecting your dry goods.
The same goes for dog and cat food, as cockroaches are attracted to it. Instead, transfer pet food from store-bought bags and into sealed containers.
Clean Counters and Shelving
Keep a tidy kitchen to prevent bugs from entering your cooking space. This means you should clean your counters and cabinet shelves, ensuring all food crumbs are wiped away. You can use a mixture of vinegar and water or a little bit of dish soap and water.
Remove Trash
Certain pests look for rotting food, with cockroaches being one of them. To avoid pests in your kitchen, remove trash frequently. Keep garbage cans closed to deter pests from looking to forage for food.
Check Window Screens
If you open windows when cooking or baking, always ensure window screens are free from holes. Otherwise, pests can enter. Should you find any holes, patch them immediately. If holes are too large to patch, consider replacing the entire screen.
The same goes for sliding doors, as pests can enter this way.
Mop and Vacuum Floors
Floors may go overlooked, especially if you accidentally spill a sugary drink. Be sure to mop or steam clean floors often, ensuring all food is removed before it attracts any pests.
You should also
vacuum regularly, removing crumbs from kitchen floors. If you see little black bugs in the kitchen, you could have carpet beetles, fruit flies, ants, and more. This is why you need to keep food covered and surfaces clean and disinfected.
Prevent Bugs in the Kitchen
Although you can take steps to prevent bugs in the kitchen, you may still find that a pest infestation occurs. If this is the case, you need a professional pest control company that you can trust.
Since pests in the kitchen can lead to a variety of
foodborne illnesses, it’s important to treat an infestation as soon as you spot one. You can also invest in recurring, monthly pest control services to keep your home pest-free.
Serene Property Services provides pest control to Sussex County, NJ, and Warwick, NY. We offer a variety of residential pest prevention plans to keep bugs and rodents from infesting your home, so
contact us today for an estimate.
