Kitchen Appliances Can Be a Magnet for Pests

The modern kitchen appliance helps us out in many ways. Your refrigerator keeps items cold, so they don’t spoil as fast. Your toaster heats up pastries and turns bread into toast. Your microwave heats and cooks food to your heart’s content. But these appliances are also responsible to attracting pests into your home.

Have you ever picked up your toaster and accidentally dropped it on the counter and see all the crumbs that fall out of it? You never realized just how much food material is left behind until that moment, right? You may not have noticed but I guarantee roaches have. This is because roaches have a keen sense of smell and direction. Their antennae are equipped with tiny structures called sensilla, packed with odorant receptors that can pick up faint traces of chemical compounds in the air.

Once a roach is in your home, it can detect the crumbs in your toaster from several meters away. Material you didn’t even know was there will attract more roaches to your kitchen.

Your refrigerator is another one. You take food in and out of this appliance every day. Even though you do a pretty good job of not spilling anything, you are not perfect. Something eventually falls onto the ground, whether it be a large piece of food or tiny crumbs. Inevitably, some of this food substance makes its way under the fridge.

That food material under the fridge is in a perfect location for roaches and ants to feast on. It is dark, secluded and hidden from observing eyes. They can feel comfortable under there while they snack away. And if some condensation forms on the coils of the fridge happens to accumulate, they can have a nice little drink to wash it all down.

It’s important to move your fridge and clean under and behind it from time to time. If you don’t you will surely run into uninvited guests.

Microwaves are notoriously a messy place in your kitchen. Food splatters on the inside and outside of this appliance all the time. Oftentimes, we will just wipe down the inside and outside surfaces of this appliance and think it is clean. But underneath your microwave waits another buffet for pests.

Ants have an extraordinary ability to detect potential food sources, largely thanks to their highly developed sense of smell, which rivals or even exceeds that of cockroaches in certain contexts. Like roaches, ants rely on their antennae, which are covered in sensilla—tiny sensory organs loaded with chemoreceptors. These receptors can pick up a vast array of chemical signals, including pheromones and food-related odors, with remarkable sensitivity.

Regularly clean in and under these kitchen appliances if you want to keep from attracting pests. Wipe the surfaces in and under these appliances with a good cleaning solution to remove any microscopic residues.