#bug infestation help

[not-really-all-that-human]

Oh fuck well depression room goes crazy

(mentions of bugs/bug infestation below)

So I've been seeing bugs every now and then on my stuff and I'm like "oh fuck do I have an infestation haha" and it's always been a joke but now I'm cleaning and I'm pretty sure I ACTUALLY HAVE A BUG INFESTATION AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO ABOUT IT

So please post tips I guess!!!!

My heart's literally racing and I'm not breathing correctly because I'm so scared of actually having this oh god I really didn't think it was that bad most of the bugs I've actually found are dead I think because they don't move but like help???? PLEASE I SWEAR IF I FIND LIVING BUGS IN MY STUFF IM ACTUALLY GOING TO START CRYING

[queruloustea]

more kissy brainrot sketches

drawing these two kissing is the thing getting me through life right now :') why must things be so hard

[asher-more-like-trasher]

Scarab sketch dump

[e8luhs]

finally getting to that stage where ive been away from my abuser for long enough that i can finally stop like... feeling bad for him or whatever even though he was ~saaaad~ when he was abusing me. i mean okay yeah i still feel bad for him sometimes i still feel guilty sometimes i still miss him sometimes because at one point we were friends jesus christ. but i dont feel so utterly plagued by it as much as before which is nice. unfortunately it does mean that my brain is stuck re-playing everything with a new light being shined over it for the several hundredth time but at least im not flagellating myself about it as much anymore. like im finally starting to think more about how i feel than about how he feels. that is something. kind of bare minimum but its something after ages of blaming myself for everything that happened

[nationalcleographic]

im not even a huge tma fan anymore or whatever but i need to let you guys know that im totally being targeted by the corruption . if i mysteriously go missing one of these days its because the bugs took me/

[luc1ferian]

What if we both went on a date to my kitchen and killed all of the fruit flies that have infested. What if we laughed as we clapped over the bodies of small, helpless yet mindless creatures that have invaded my home in a desperate attempt to survive and reproduce. What if you find and scratch a fly right again the refrigerator and I get two at once. What if we find a motherload of bug surrounding the fruit bowl and collect so many bodies. What if we set up bowls of apple cider vinegar traps together. What if we danced to music as we twirl and clap around the room. What if we held our hands between a bug and crush it swiftly and almost mercifully to death, then carefully rub its innards off of each others palms. What then.

[funkylilomen]

if i see another goddamn wasp in this house i will cry /hj

[clatterbane]

Yay, more prophylactic freezer action.

All the dry staples (rice, flour, beans, etc.) from the grocery order earlier are now in frozen quarantine for a few days before they go anywhere near our pantry cupboard. Because I was unfortunately reminded again not long ago that I probably should NOT have slacked off on that, when I found minor evidence of flour moths in my previous bag of cornmeal. 😵

After some careful inspection, it didn't look like any had managed to get much further than that. Everything infestable that was in there got cycled through the freezer to kill off any kind of bugs and/or their eggs anyway, playing it safe. I actually just cleared out the final batch this evening, to make room for the new stuff. Including a fresh bag of the same cornmeal!

The few items left in those four drawers usually dedicated to dry goods are, like, pickled vegetables and some shirataki noodles in vacuum pouches. Not tempting chow for horrible little moth larvae, and it would be obvious if the pouches had lost seal

Now an amazing amount of pantry stuff has been taking up space to one side of our living room for several weeks altogether--and I am leaving that cabinet empty of everything that might host them for a few more days, until those new groceries are ready to leave quarantine. Just to hopefully make sure there's a lower chance of any eggs or anything lingering in there.

Our temporary pantry, y'all. That back of the couch bag just got hastily hoiked there a little while ago.

Thankfully no evidence of any worrying bugs anywhere else in the house so far, with the freezer-cycled food just sitting there in the openwith no good way to keep anything out of it. Can't say I will be sorry to finally get everything back where it belongs!

Anyway, I am indeed aware that this might seem like an overly nutty reaction to finding what looked like evidence of moth webs in a bag of cornmeal. And maybe it really is.

But yeah, I do have actual OCD. Plus I lived with both moths and freaking weevils in my mom's food hoard, which she couldn't just get rid of on any of the several different occasions when bugs did get into it. Hitchhiking in on new items from the store.

She would honest to goodness also go ahead and cook pasta that she knew had weevils lurking in the package, and fish them out of the boiling water with a spoon. 🥴 I think I took significant psychic damage from just several years of those damned moths flapping around the whole house, and their awful maggoty-looking web spinning children dangling on threads. I remember walking straight into one hanging from the living room ceiling fan, of all places. And this shit went on for several years straight.

Those little fuckers will get into things that you wouldn't even imagine them possibly being attracted to. You may think a jar or other firmly closed lidded hard container will keep them out, but if it's not completely airtight they will find a way in.

On the plus side, I did develop extensive experience at identifying signs of weevils and moths in your food stores.

Anyway, I really am extra motivated to avoid dealing with pest bugs in my own pantry, now that I am in charge of my own. Brought home weevils a couple of times back in London, but promptly tossed everything that might be infested and preemptively froze the rest.

So yeah, it might be aggravating, but I think I will indeed go back to making sure everything risky that comes in goes through freezer quarantine before it joins the other food. Needing to systematically go through and do that on all the existing shit has eaten up way more spoons than if I had just done it gradually before a new thing went into the cabinet at all. And luckily we also have more freezer space now, to help make quarantine more practical.

Also, it may be pretty ingrained in me to keep plenty of food on hand. To the point that I do set actual stock limits for myself. But, at least this feels like further evidence that I really do not seem to have developed the same outright hoarding urge--to the point that you literally could not bring yourself to throw a buggy bag of cornmeal or rice in the trash. 😬 I can, and will, toss whatever I need to in order to keep things non-disgusting.

[yoshistory]

awhile back my roommate stopped using the shared trashcan and started just putting bags and bags of trash in their room to fill up and take out later and was doing this for months and at the same time i stopped methodically cleaning everything in the house constantly cause i was the only one. cleaning always. so i cleaned just not Daily like he wanted me to. and exactly as these two things collided just. cockroaches everywhere. great.

[loyalhorror]

@notjusthespongenextdoor sent me the book 'how to keep house while drowning' and it let me tidy up a tiny bit and sweep my kitchen floor.... extremely good

[snekdood]

Im never even really upset about losing the things people steal from me, im always more upset that they feel the need to do that and all the deception and destruction of trust that goes along with it. Its genuinely upsetting for me, and so far, none of the shit anyones stolen from me has been for like. An actual justified reason. At least steal some fuckin food or something.

[noburden]

.

[datasgal]

putting in the strange tags i’ve been finding throughout tumblr. curious on what they could lead to

[mayspicer]

Mmm nothing like a good old full blown panic attack, I haven't had one in years. This time at least I have access to medication to make it stop a lot faster, but I have 6 pills left for the next 2,5 months and the recent trends in my mental state are not looking good.

[squapejuice]

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[clanoffelidae]

Pitcher Plant Inspired Fruit Fly Trap With Stuff You Have In Your House (/Apartment/Dorm/Place Of Residence- you know what I mean)

Before I start (not required reading feel free to skip):

Why is this tagged under adhd and neurodivergent? Because I suffer from adhd in addition to other mental illnesses and I wholeheartedly believe that these are major contributors to how I got to the point of needing this in the first place. Tasks hard. Dishes gross. I don't like living in a dirty environment but when Thing Hard and Brain Says No shit happens and here we are. I hope this may be able to help others with similar issues!

I have no idea how successful this idea is on a larger scale. I just came up with it myself two weeks ago, it seems to be working, so I'm sharing it in the hopes that it will help others! Please feel free to let me know if it works for you/offer any suggestions or critique!

Okay, read here!

Because reading hard and attention span equivalent to said fruit flies, I have turned this into a bullet point list. :)

Items needed:

cup

water

soap (i used generic dish soap)

plastic wrap

sugar (potentially not needed?? idk i thought maybe it would help mask the soap)

fruit (i used watermelon)

Construction:

put some soap in cup

fill maybe 2/3-3/4 of the way full with water

mix to make sure water is nice and soapy

swish to make sure sides of cup are soapy

put a decent amount of sugar in there (it'll dissolve in time just ignore it)

fill as much as possible with fruit chunks

put plastic wrap over the top

poke decent sized hole in the middle

put near sink/fruit fly problem and ignore

ta-da all done, you can stop here :)

How it's worked for me so far:

It took a while to really get going, they seemed largely uninterested in it for the first few days. A few of them got caught but not very many. However, once the watermelon started rotting it really picked up steam. The plastic wrap has helped keep the smell mostly trapped so as long as I don't pick it up and take a sniff I can just leave it there and it doesn't bother me or my roommate. The trap has been going for just about 2 weeks now and here's what it looks like currently.

The thing is full of the little buggers, and while I haven't been staring at it to know if the plastic wrap has successfully kept them from escaping/the soapy sides have caused them to fall, or if they'd be getting caught regardless, I DO know that it keeps the smell in and I have seen some crawling on the underneath of the plastic wrap and tapped it to drop them in the water several times before so hey I think it's helpful.

The fruit flies aren't COMPLETELY gone, and no doubt it's being helped by the fact that I haven't let the sink get as bad as it was before (you don't wanna know), it seems to have caught a fair number of them and I am more than happy to know that at least this many fruit flies have died a soapy death instead of buzzing around the kitchen so hey if it works it works. I'd say I generally only see 1-3 around the kitchen at any given point rn so take that as you will. It's undoubtedly a combination of factors but I like to think my pitcher plant inspired trap is contributing!

Anyway, I hope this helps someone! Again, feel free to add in any critiques/ideas for improvement, I just made this up two weeks ago out of frustration and being BrokeTM (plus: go shopping for bug traps??? in this mental state??? it took me ages to clean the sink and you think i want to go to the store???) so it's not exactly a long process of development here lol

Good luck to everyone suffering with fruit flies they are. Annoying. :))))