Do This in October and Bugs Never Come Inside (The Japanese Way)

Every October my mother made little white dumplings, and nobody in our family was allowed to eat them. Her small Japanese apartment in Osaka had thin walls and wet summers, and she still kept the bugs outside, where they belong. These are her eight autumn rules: the delivery box never comes inside, the drains nobody uses get thirty seconds of water every Sunday, kitchen scraps wait in the freezer until trash day, new flour spends four days in the freezer and raw rice lives in the fridge, everything outside comes in by three in the afternoon (and stink bugs are never squashed), clothes are washed before they're stored with only one kind of moth repellent, the gap around the pipes under the sink gets stuffed and sealed, and only then do the dumplings go out, in four hidden places. 00:00 The dumplings nobody could eat 01:24 1. The box stays outside 02:50 2. The drain nobody uses 04:44 3. Scraps in the freezer 06:00 4. Rice in the fridge, flour in the freezer 07:42 5. The three o'clock rule 09:02 6. Washed before it's stored 10:43 7. The hole where the pipes go in 12:01 8. The little white dumplings 13:46 The honest part 14:30 What bugs cost a busy house 15:08 One thing for tonight Please be careful: keep boric acid and mothballs where no child or pet can ever reach them (use closed bait stations if little ones or pets visit), never mix two kinds of moth repellent, follow every product label, call poison control right away if anything is swallowed, and call a professional if you see roaches in the daytime. Count every cardboard box in your house right now, the garage, the closets, under the beds, and put your number in the comments. Say where you're writing from, too. I read every one. Emiko is a fictional character created with AI; her stories are a character's stories. #MamaEmiko #JapaneseHabits #HomeTips Subscribe for easier cleaning, laundry and home care the Japanese way: https://www.youtube.com/@MamaEmikoTV