HELP! Pantry bugs!

[cococobain]

I didn't know where to put this! Yesterday I grabbed a frying pan from the pantry and noticed this tiny white grain on it. Then it MOVED! I called OH and we inspected the pantry and noticed hundreds and hundreds of them on jars, pots and pans, the breadmaker, cake tins, amongst the dried goods etc. The pantry is an open cubby next to our open kitchenette and when getting a glass out of the kitchen cabinet the flippen glasses had them too!

It happened so fast, one day we didn't have them and now we have them everywhere. I think they might be flour mites? I'm not sure what the name of them are, I just know they are tiny, almost microscopic and white. The worst is we have a pet rat whose cage is in the spare bedroom (where all my laundry is folded atm on the spare bed) and his food has them too and a pair of shoes in there was crawling with them, so I can only assume all the laundry has it too. UGH MY SKIN IS CRAWLING JUST TYPING THIS.

I want to just bin everything, but I have to wait till OH gets back from work so one us can run out to the bin with the infested garbage bags ASAP while the other scrubs the fack out of everything with bleach. Summer is just starting too, perfect weather for a bug infestation!

Anyone dealt with something like this before? How do I keep it from spreading???

 

[dgirllamius]

I store a lot of crap on top of my fridge and one day noticed these little things all over my spices and oil bottles. I just scrubbed the hell out of the area with bleach and haven't noticed anything since. I binned all my spices and oil just in case they were in there too (cost a fortune to replace them all -.-). Haven't seen any since so hopefully got rid of them but it was a small area. I'm not really sure how you can keep them from spreading but I guess a good scrub down will do the trick. I don't know if it's a good idea to use a bug bomb.

 

[rosie272]

Do you have fennel seeds in the cupboard at all? This happened to me before and after trying all sorts of sprays and cleaning products we discovered it was the fennel seeds that had mutated into little creatures :/ haven't bought it since!

 

[Abz1982]

Could these be weevils?

https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Weevils-(Flour-Bugs)

 

[cococobain]

They aren't so visible or black as the ones in that link. I've found some google images that match what I have exactly.

https://0.tqn.com/w/experts/Entomology-Study-Bugs-665/2008/07/Mites-Lice-Help.jpg

Oh god they are all over my dinner plates! Everything I've read says to bin whatever they've infested - but what about household items? I have to confess, my pantry is a mess right now, it's got the tool box, vacuum cleaner, a massage table - all crawling with these bugs. I've read they aren't harmful in any way, but I'm still having a slight panic attack right now!

Oh and yes, someone a while back gave us a container of fennel seeds! From now on if I get this under control I am freezing all dried goods before storing it away :/

 

[amjon]

We had some little brown bugs. We threw out any food they were in and vacuumed the cabinets and anywhere we found them. Bleach water should kill them. I'd just wash the pots/pans/ non food items.