Help please!!! Little live things in kitchen press ...

[Valsoldknickers]

Ooh dear, please can someone throw me a few pearls of wisdom?

Went to make dinner and opened a press which contains on the bottom shelf: big wok and pans that don't fit in pot drawer, vegetable oil, flour and bread mix, a bottle of Baileys (yum) and a few ceramic odds and ends. Took out a white dish to get to the wok and there were hundreds of little tiny brown flecky things on it and they were all moving. They were like tiny iron filings but brown and most definitely alive.

Would anyone know what they are and what to do to get rid / keep them away.

The baby's food is on the shelf above

Flour mites?

If you think that's what they are, best to chuck all open dry goods, wipe out shelves and everything else, and in future store flour/bread mix in Tupperware/similar.

I had them a few years ago. Massive pita, but easy to get rid of.

Flour weevils? Look them up and compare with what you have. (Check inside your flour packets for movement!)

I had them before we had internet! Just double bagged and binned all the opened packets jars, bottles etc. and all the flour. So pretty much all our food except tins. I then ran every dish through a hot diswasher. Meanwhile, i sprayed and then wiped down all the inside and outside surfaces of every kitchen cupboard with hot, soapy water, getting right into the edges and corners.

Aah yes, the flour is walking! Will deal with it when baby goes to bed.

I guess the dead fish will have to stay in the aquarium for tonight. How come I get all the nice jobs around here?!

Thank you for your help!

They're not harmful, btw.
So if you are of string stomach you could still use all the stuff.

Happened to me. Grim grim grim. I ended up chucking out ALL open packs of dry food as I kept finding new ones in new place for weeks... I would cut to the chase if I were you, and just do that. And bleach the crap out of the cupboards. And never buy cheap flour. And freeze all new flour overnight.

Can you tell the experience scarred me? Low point was being three months pregnant, sick as a dog, and noticing the little fuckers in re END of a bowl of muesli I was eating. The first solid food I had managed to keep down in days.

It didn't stay there.

Thanks! As long as the Baileys makes it I should be ok

Yeah it scarred me too! I wrote that you can still use the stuff, but I sure as hell didn't.

And I now freeze flour like sleepy; also I put everything once opened into airtight storage. No old icecream tubs, or pretty tins for me.