Persistent Flour Mites

[gherkin16]

Hi all,

Recently found we have an infestation of flour mites! We found the source and emptied four cupboards worth of food so there's nothing else for them to survive off of.

• We hoovered the cupboards, cleaned them with bleach and soapy water and then dried each with a hairdryer to make sure they were fully dry
• Put all of our glasses (where we first found them) in the dishwasher and returned them to the newly clean cupboard

The next day they're back again! All over the clean glasses, they're on our pots and pans and bowls.

Anyone had any experience of ones that just won't budge and need something a bit stronger than a deep clean?

Many thanks!

Argh! No advise but I'm off to check my cupboards.

This might help www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/2988302-Flour-mites

Bay leaves put bay leaves in the cupboard, dried bay leaves dont smell of anything so you won't make your cupboard smell or anything but it does keep them away.

Peppermint and bayleaves can be a deterrent. I also cleaned out my cupboards with neat vodka (and was tempted to blowtorch the, to be honest!). I keep everything grain based in lock n lock and that forms the best seal.

Mine got in from a bloody farm shop packet of barley. Took me almost a year of deep cleaning every month or so to be completely rid.

Thank you everyone!

I've been on every website and thread possible, different remedies are advised so I wanted a fresh set of opinions on what to do!

hushhush9 - Thank you very much, we've just bought food grade diatomaceous earth so we could get it done today which I've heard can be effective. We'll purchase this if the DE comes up with nothing

fuzzywuzzy & PickAChew - thank you both! we threw our bay leaves out as these buggers got everywhere. Will pop to the shop for some new ones

Silverthorn - I've never seen them in my life until now! It was definitely an open pack of pizza bases in the cupboard (thanks to my SO!) so hopefully that was the only cause and they wont come back!

A week later the majority have gone! Still, a few very persistent little buggers floating around.

• First, we threw away everything in our food cupboards, even items that they don't eat as they were still crawling over them plus I read something about them sticking to the glue on can labels.
• We hoovered every cupboard and used a bleach and soapy solution to clean them out
• Placed all our crockery and glassware in the dishwasher and contained it outside the kitchen
• We bought a HUGE tub of Diatomaceous Earth from Amazon and sprinkled it everywhere in the kitchen, focusing on cupboard corners, cupboard handles, the top of the cupboard door.
• After a couple of days we hoovered it all up and have used anti-bac wipes to clean everywhere again

There are a few I've found here and there on containers so we'll probably do the process once more as they have a life cycle of up to 20 or 30 days

Thanks for all of your tips! I'm hoping they'll ALL be gone for good soon