Best and Quickest Way to Kill Disgusting Maggots in Your Garbage Can

The most disgusting part of Illinois' scorching hot and humid summer days is maggots inside your garbage can. Here's the best way to handle the problem.

Nobody Wants to See This in Their Garbage Can

Have you ever brought your cans back from the curb on garbage day and gotten smacked in the face with a rotten smell? It's likely some meat or chicken product that sat for too long in your garbage can and in intense heat. That is the perfect storm for creating a maggot problem.

I noticed a couple of hundred maggots crawling around the bottom of my trash can.

RELATED: Your #1 Job This Spring and Summer in Illinois is to Kill This Insect

Here's what I did after near vomiting.

It's moments like these you wish you could just walk away and the problem would fix itself. Nope. Time to get deep in this can and clean out the nasty.

What is a maggot?

A maggot is the larvae of a fly. A fly lays eggs that turn into larvae (maggots), which become flies, lay more eggs, and so on. Basically, my garbage can looked like it had a couple of spoonfuls of long-grain white rice crawling around.

After a little research, I found that I wasn't going to have to get too intimate with these critters.

The first two things I needed, were lime and salt.

You had the same thought I did, I should make a margarita and deal with the maggots later.

You can dump some lime, salt, or vinegar in the can to kill maggots, but you have to cover them. Well, I only had one lime in the fridge that probably wasn't going to produce enough juice. I didn't want to waste my salt and I didn't have very much vinegar left. I did go buy some vinegar for, after the maggot mass murder, that I'll explain why that's important in a moment.

After a little more research, I found that there is one way to kill maggots instantly and we all have it at home, every one of us.

Here's a video of what I did to get rid of maggots in my trash can and it totally worked.

SEE MORE: 10 Most Annoying Pests You’ll Encounter in Illinois This Summer

I used the new bottle of vinegar to clean the can after completing my maggot destruction mission. The vinegar will also help keep maggots from reappearing.