Years ago, I had a huge infestation from food leftover from a camping trip. Getting rid of them took two years and throwing out every bit of grain, legumes, spices, flour, bird food, even the placemats my son made in preschool with designs of grains and peas.

Anything you bring home should go into the freezer for at least two weeks… or just throw it out.

I admit that for long noodles (angel hair, spaghetti) I use tall plastic jars from the Dollar Store, even though they are made in China.

I also have mason jars but they’re too small for storing twenty pounds of flour. However the popcorn, flax seed and other smallish quantity items go into recycled mason jars. I used to buy that store-made pasta sauce (tomato) and acquired quite a few handsome jars that way. Recycled a lot of them in a decluttering frenzy some years ago but a few still hang around. Guess I could scrounge the neighborhood recycle bins for more, or just ask the neighbors, huh? It’s work.

Then there’s mice. This year I had mice get into my root cellar for the first time since it was built. That’s typical- years of “ok, I’ve got them excluded…” – then whammo. They’ll chew through any plastic on the planet, if they have a reason to.

Metals corrode- and might have weird toxic components in that process. There’s a good reason grandma loved her big stoneware crocks. Which are sucked up by the antique dealers these days, to look cute somewhere. Still; you can find them.

I once had a moth infestation and they easily burrowed holes into plastic bags or crawled into paper sacks to lay their eggs in the food inside. They didn’t touch the pasta though. It was mostly the rice, barley, beans, lentils, cornmeal, flour they were after.