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Learn From The Pros
It is important to ant proof your food storage and every pantry should be regularly inspected for weaknesses in your storage game. Airtight containers are the best way to store your food but is it just as necessary to keep dirty dishes washed and seal cracks in and around your home. If you want to go the extra mile, sprinkling a little cinnamon around. Ants hate it!
How to Ant Proof Your Food Storage
If the last few years have taught you anything, it’s that you need to have food storage. Remember the great toilet paper shortage? Now, it seems things like cream cheese are at a premium. You’ve spent good money building a stockpile for your family to ensure that you won’t go hungry, but what about ant-proofing your food storage?
There are lots of insects and vermin that are just waiting for an opportunity to glut on your smorgasbord of nutrition, but you must be one step ahead of them. Buying food and supplies in bulk comes with its benefits but can involve risks. Anyone who works in a warehouse will tell you that pest control is a constant issue.
There are things you can do to be proactive and keep ants out of your kitchen. Taking some time to ant proof your food storage now can save you money on pest control in the long run.
Keeping Ants Out of Food Storage
The busy ant is always working and scrounging for food to bring back to the colony. When they find a source that will nourish them, they call all their fellow workers to help harvest the stock. The problem with ants is that they’re so small, so they can easily slip into places that other insects might have issues.
While your food storage may be mouse and rat proof, making sure to ant proof your food storage takes things to a whole other level. One of the best measures for pest control is to be proactive. This means you will want to check to see if you have a problem in the first place, but it requires you to inspect some things on your own unless you call in professionals.
Seal Cracks to Keep Ants out of your Food Storage
Even if you have a state-of-the-art temperature-controlled room for your food, there’s still going to be cracks. Most people just have an area in or around their kitchen to keep their surplus. Check around the door, in the seams of the room, and around the ceiling for any entry points. These are the areas where an ant can easily slip in for a midnight feast and if you don’t ant proof your food storage, they will find quite the treasure trove.
Don’t Allow Dirty Dishes to Pile in The Sink or Counters
Ants and many other pests are attracted to dirty dishes from the leftovers they provide just sitting there in the sink. You may be dreading dish duty but ants are banking on you to not follow through completing that task so they can have a healthy meal. This is one of the biggest problems that pest control professionals see. Other problem areas come from keeping skillets of grease, countertops with dirty dishes, and crumbs lying around.
You can keep ants away by rinsing and putting the dishes in the dishwasher, even if you don’t run the machine immediately. Ants, and other pests, will make a feast on the debris of food left behind from a meal, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Leave No Crumbs Behind
Your teenager goes to the food pantry to grab some cereal. They fill their bowl and put the bag loosely inside the box. The problem is that they’ve left the bag half-open, and they spilled a few flakes on the shelf. This is not a way to ant proof your food storage.
As a kid, they don’t think much about a spill here or a crumb there, but the ant can smell a dinner for their family. Did you know that an ant can smell food in your home anywhere from 3-10 meters away? Okay, it doesn’t sound like a big number, but a roach can’t smell nearly that far.
The ants are almost always the first ones to arrive on the scene for a chance at a treat, and they will bring lots of uninvited guests with them. Being sure that you have ant proofed your food storage is the best way to combat these issues.
Use Airtight Containers
Food storage has become quite sophisticated these days, so it’s best to invest in the proper equipment to keep things clean. Airtight containers are a good solution to ant proof your food storage to protect your food from moisture, but by keeping insects like the ants away. Sure, you’re not going to need this stuff for canned foods, but once you open a sealed package, you need to protect that food.
The biggest mistake that most people make is assuming those flimsy snap and seal, re-closable bags are pest-proof. It’s just too easy to leave a section unsealed and invite trouble.
Use Bay Leaves and Cinnamon
There are many herbs that detour pests as they cannot stand the smell. Cinnamon is one that ants particularly hate. They also dislike lavender, peppermint, coffee grounds, and eucalyptus. Get a spray bottle with water and mix some herbs into the liquid.
Spray the entryways and around the room. Repeat the spray process about once a month to keep the scent strong. Use ground cinnamon by setting it out in bowls or sprinkling around shelves. Their sense of smell and pheromones will identify this is one area to avoid.
Calling in the Pros
Sometimes, you still have issues with pests, no matter what you do. Part of the problem is that there are so many distinct species that one may be able to stand a smell or get into something that another one cannot. It’s a unique problem because while all these little critters have commonalities, they’re not the same.
Having a pest control expert to help ant proof your food storage can prove beneficial, especially since you don’t know what type of ants have invaded your food storage. Some of the most common ants in New Jersey area include:
You want a company with plenty of experience handling the various types of ants. You certainly don’t treat the carpenter ant in the same manner that you would a traditional house variety. Did you know that many people try to handle the problem on their own with sprays bought from the local hardware store? These folks think they’re saving money or don’t feel they have a significant issue.
Rest assured, when you call in the professionals, we’ve seen worse than what you’re dealing with, and we want to help. We use a non-judgmental approach to assisting our customers, and using up-to-date technology and equipment, we tackle this problem head-on.
When you have a great deal of money invested in food storage to secure your family’s future, it’s best to have someone with experience and the right tools to take care of things for you. Is your pantry safe because you ant proofed your food storage?
