How OXO POP Containers Saved My Pantry

It started with one. A single gray and brown moth that fluttered out of the pantry as I was getting ready to bake my daughter’s birthday cake. Within a few weeks, we were tearing apart our pantry—and practically tearing out our hair—as everything from our pasta to our nuts had been infested by flour moths.

Turns out, flour moth infestation happens often to anyone lacking an airtight, pest-free food storage solution. Which is why I did my homework and rapidly realized that OXO POP containers were about to become my pantry’s new best friend.

Flour Moths and Dry Food Storage Issues

If you’ve never had flour moths (also called Indian meal moths), consider yourself lucky, as they are persistent once they’ve taken up residence. These carb-loving critters adore dry goods—particularly flours, grains, nuts and cereals.

Flour moths work their way into sealed cardboard, paper and even thin plastic packaging and lay hundreds of eggs. Soon, the larvae are feasting on your pasta, forcing you to toss everything in your pantry and start fresh.

Why I Chose OXO POP Containers

POP containers are made of thick, BPA-free plastic with a silicone seal on the lid for airtight food storage. The sleek, clear containers are stackable for an organized, elegant pantry storage look and they’re also practical, letting you see at a glance when supplies are running low.

Tossing your old storage bins and buying a stack of OXO POP containers is an investment that more than pays for itself when you account for all the dry goods you have to replace every time you’re unlucky enough to bring home flour moths and other pantry pests.

How to Clean and Prep Your Pantry

Before you convert to POP containers, take a minute to rid your pantry of any lingering moth problem. Here’s how to do it:

• Take everything out of the pantry. Yes—everything.
• Deep clean the shelves. Vacuum then scrub with soap and water to help eliminate food remnants, eggs or larvae. If your shelves are adjustable, use a toothpick to clean out the tiny holes for the pegs, as pantry moths can lay eggs in them.
• Thoroughly inspect your food. Look inside and outside each package for signs of pantry moths, including sticky webbing, a clumpy texture, or the larvae or moths themselves. Even though pantry moths can’t break into canned goods, they can still produce eggs and webbing around the can. Toss out everything that’s been infested and clean anything that’s bug-free.
• Toss expired products. Now’s the time to ditch stale graham crackers, even if the pantry moths haven’t gotten to them.
• Keep the pantry empty for a week. Before restocking, make sure every last moth is gone.
• Freeze anything that looks untouched. Even if you don’t see evidence of pantry moths in your rice now, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Freezing food kills off eggs or moths.

Organizing Your Pantry

The silver lining in my battle with flour moths? My revamped pantry never looked cleaner and more organized. Using a single style of storage container like the OXO POP containers gives you a sleek, cohesive pantry look that makes it easy to find exactly what you need.

Anything that’s not in a can or sealed jar should be popped into a POP container to keep it safe. They come in a wide range of sizes and shapes, so you can choose exactly what you need—whether it’s tall and narrow for spaghetti, or super-sized to manage your bulk purchase of oats. These are a few ways I organize my pantry:

• The 6-piece POP Container set is perfect for my flour, oats, and sugar (the 4.2L size will fit a 2kg of flour easily). And you don’t have to stick with the classic white tops and clear containers, as OXO’s Steel POP Containers are also sleek and stylish!
• I use the OXO POP 5.7L Big Square Tall for bulk snacks, large-format pastas, and cereal—or super-sized amounts of oats and flour.
• The OXO POP 4.2L Big Square Medium is just right for up to 2kg of flour, sugar, and oats.
• Try the OXO POP 2.6L Big Square Short to hold up to 1.8kg of rice.
• The OXO POP 2.6L Rectangle Medium is perfect for a box of cereal, rice, or pasta—and its slimmer profile lets it squeeze into smaller spots on your shelf.
• If you need to take up even less space, the OXO POP 1.6L Rectangle Short will do the trick—and it can handle 450gms of coffee or dried beans, or 1kg of rice.
• The OXO POP 500ml Mini Square is the perfect size for a 450gm bag of chocolate chips.

Next Steps for Putting Order in the Pantry

You can check out the full guide to OXO POP Containers to decide which sizes and styles you need for your pantry. After that, a few more steps will make it easy to find what you want, when you want it.

• Pour your food into the container and seal. The silicone seal on a POP container provides airtight food storage, so nothing’s getting in—or out.
• Label your items. Even in clear containers, it can be hard to differentiate between basmati and long grain rice. Label them with the durable, water-resistant POP Removable Labels.
• Place most-used items at eye level. Also, group items frequently used together on the same shelf—all my sugar (including brown sugar stored in the POP Brown Sugar Keeper), flour, and other baking stuff is on one shelf; pasta is on another.
• Don’t be afraid to stack containers. Unless you have a dream walk-in pantry, space is at a premium. Fortunately, OXO POP containers can stack easily on top of one another to take advantage of as much vertical space as you have.

How to Keep Pantry Pests Away

With the right containers for your pantry, your flour moth prevention should be complete, as your dry goods will be safely sealed away. But there are a few more things you can do to prevent a hostile pantry takeover.

• Carefully inspect dry goods before you buy them. Look for signs of webbing along the package seams, or if there’s a clear window, look for the bugs themselves.
• Use the oldest items in your pantry first. Organize your pantry so the oldest items are in the front to avoid food waste and give bugs less opportunity to invade.
• Freeze food before storing it. Putting nuts, flour and other dry goods there for a week will kill off any moths.
• Clean up spills and deep-clean shelves every few months. Flour moths live on small amounts of food—a sprinkle of flour or a few grains of rice can trigger an infestation.
• Stick with airtight storage. OXO POP containers will ensure that any pantry moths that do appear will be trapped in that container—so you may lose the pasta, but not the whole pantry.
• Buy a trap and check it regularly. If you see bugs trapped on the sticky strips of a flour moth trap, it’s time to follow the clean and prep plan to solve the problem.

It was a tough road to get here, but there’s something incredibly satisfying about opening my pantry and seeing an organized and aesthetically pleasing set of dry goods in my OXO POP containers—and not a single, solitary moth.