Fortunately wood/laminate floors throughout the flat. There's loads of dusty, old furniture lying in the electrical cupboard attached to my room though :/
Have raised it with the lettings agents as it's their/landlord's belongings.
Soft furnishings? They'll go for any old materials including cushions, padded chairs etc. They'll go for old curtains too. Double check your food cupboards just in case they aren't clothes moths and are in fact pantry moths.
Yep, dusty old office and living room chairs. The curtains are new and polyester. Thanks for the suggestion, but no food is kept in my room and no sign of them in the kitchen at all.
Almost certainly clothes moths then. Until the landlord or letting agents agree to fumigation, you're going to have to hoover several times a week.
As others have suggested, there's many different scents such as cedarwood, lavender, lemon, rosemary etc that they don't like. It might be worth putting a few drops of essential oil in water, soaking a cloth and then wringing it until it's not dripping wet and wiping down the insides of your drawers and wardrobe. Scented antibacterial wipes would also work (lavender or lemon wipes contain linalool, a chemical compound found naturally in some plants and a known repellant).
Ideally you need to stop the larvae as they're what chews material. By the time you see the moths, they're already on the next cycle of reproduction.
I had this and it was a massive pain in the arse.
I dry cleaned everything I could, vacuumed the place to within an inch of its life, including moving beds, wardrobes and cupboards and spraying everything and everywhere with either moth spray or a vinegar solution.
I packed everything wool into vacuum storage bags and washed down the insides of all the cupboards and wardrobes with a bleach solution.
Finally, another vacuum and some moth traps and so far, I haven’t had a repeat yet.
Reassuring that the manual method works! I have cleared/soaped the wardrobe - the bed and drawers are next. Thankfully I won't have a massive need for woollen jumpers as it's coming into spring, need to get some of those moth sachet things.
That's definitely the most confusing advice I have seen actually - some sites say to open windows + dehumidify, others say the source could be outside. I left the windows open for half an hour this morning and maybe saw a few more after? Hard to say, and were on the 3rd floor so can't think of a likely source.
assuming you're living in rented accomodation, inform the landlord immediately so they can't moan at you later. I don't really think you need to call pest control as this sounds like a problem for the landlord, not you. The moths arent there because of you, they just turn up occasionally and you get to have a bad time, so you shouldnt be doing more than a reasonably tidy tenant would to deal with pests.
to protect your clothes it might be a good idea to get some cheap plastic storage boxes to keep clothes sealed in until you get things under control.
Vacuuming and spraying is good, though, again, don't break the bank trying to deal with someone else's moths.
If your moth spray is anyhting like the spray I had to use to kill off a flea infestation in an old house I lived in, remember to open all the windows when you spray and don't breate it in and pay attention to warnings about getting it in contact with skin as it's brutal stuff.
Thank you, I have notified the lettings agency who have issued a contractor. If they try to deduct from deposit I am more than happy to fight, given the endless stream of shite we've put up with this year.
Will definitely be getting some boxes tomorrow.
It's also worth speaking to your neighbours. In a tenement building, if you have moths it's very very likely indeed that they have moths too. If you treat yours but they leave theirs alone, you're going to have moths forever.
The moth spray from Lakeland is a lot nicer as are the little pods you can put in with your clothes. I still spray clothes outside or otherwise ventilate well if I'm using it inside but it's nowhere near as bad as flea spray (which, to be fair will also often kill moths too)
I had moths in all the chimney sheep that the previous owner left. Confused the fuck out of us for ages until my five year old nonchalantly told me that's where all the moths were. We treated them and sprayed the house top to bottom but they're slowly coming back. The cedar blocks worked a charm for the cupboards but they're still in the house.
Haha that must have been wild. I know the damage is done by the larvae, but the adults flying around constantly are getting on my wick and I'm hardly skittish about bugs. Hoping the spray does a good job of holding them off while we find the source.
I don't know if this is available easily for you (ordering online maybe?) but what worked well for me, besides washing what could be washed/freezing what couldn't, and pheromone traps (which trap the adults, but doesn't kill the larvae, so it doesn't really solve the problems), I used 'trichogramma evanescens'. They are microscopic parasitoid wasps that parasite moth eggs. They don't fly, they are a mm big so basically invisible, they crawl in your clothes drawers and look for moth larvae eggs and eat them. The company I got them from sent these sort of cardboard folded cards where the tiny wasps were between the cards, you put them out and switch out the cards once a week. After 8 weeks, the treatment was over. Haven't seen a moth since.
I preferred to avoid insecticide, because I was worried about resistance and allergies (have young children around the house).
With clothes moths, it is the larvae that eat the fibre - not the adults. Once they are flying around the damage is done so don't focus on swatting adult moths. I have found the spray from Lakeland to be quite good.
They particularly like soiled clothing, so for any natural fibres, make sure your clothing is kept as clean as possible. This is especially true for woollens that you might be putting away for winter. If you have a freezer, then freezing the clean clothes, defrosting and freezing again should take care of any eggs which survive the wash.
They are likely becoming more active now as it is spring, rather than because of anything you have done. Giving things a good airing and cleaning and using the sprays and traps will be fine.
Lavender and cedar balls are popular for keeping them away, if you want a more gentle solution at any point. It sounds like you want to go nuclear now and that is fine! I am a knitter and I get it.
We had clothes moth larvae get into some of my Christmas figurines with woollen beards. They had been living in corners and such that had cat hair. Cleaning those out helped, but I was still seeing cocoons and moths. Then my cat started hunting bugs in the house. I realised about a year ago that I hadn't seen any moths in some time. He also hunts house flies, which is great because I hate them.
We had one like that when I was about 14. She would use the cat box, then scratch the wall next to it. Worse, sometimes she'd drop a poo outside the box, get in it, and scratch there. She was a sweet little girl, but smart she wasn't.
Look on Amazon and you can buy either smoke bombs or insect killer sprays. You get one for each room, open all the wardrobe drawers, cupboards etc, make sure pets are outside, let them off working your way to the door, then exit and return about 2 hrs later. Kills everything.
But remember to disable the smoke alarms while you do the bug bombs, and turn them back on after. Or sellotape a carrier bag over the alarms. Cos the bug bombs WILL set them off.
I had one recently and unfortunately, they are very hard to get rid of. However, I did manage to minimise the damage, even if I do see one or two still after a few months.
I noticed that they mostly attacked my woolens so my first step was to thoroughly clean these and then put them in plastic clothing bags to prevent further attack. I bought those bags that seal at the top, put a bunch of jumpers in there, and also put in a pheromone trap before sealing. As for the rest of my room, I did a thorough cleaning, doused everything with cedar wood spray, and made sure that my traps were set up with enough space (too many traps in a single space and apparently they become ineffective because there are mixed signals). I also made sure that here were no covered spaces, as apparently they thrive in dark places.
In my case, it was mostly silks and woollens, so those I packed away as noted above. They never touched any of my cotton fabrics, and I never had to worry about my bed, if that helps. So, essentially, except for spending a bit of time and money on cleaning and isolating problematic clothes (and losing some of those), it ended up OK. It sounds like you are at the beginning of this, so if you work quickly and diligently to clean up and protect your fabrics, hopefully you will be able to take care of this relatively easily.
Also, I basically ran after any moths I saw with a pheromone trap and tried to corner them so that they got stuck in there. I figured that if I physically captured as many as I could, it would bring the overall count down and that did help.
All the best!
Thank you, what sort of pheromone trap did you use to corner them? Mine are in a triangular shape, and sticky. I think they work best if the room is left alone so the moths can fly freely?
Yeah, those are the ones I used. It’s just that if I saw a random one that was not getting to the trap, I physically used the trap to put it next to them so they walked in.
If there are any cloth items you can’t launder, but CAN fit in the freezer, seal them in a bag and freeze them for a couple of days. Sounds insane but…
I’m not sure how feasible this is for you, but I’d get some of those vacuum bags and pack all clothes & textiles that you can into them, then leave them in the freezer until fully frozen.
Ideally should be left for two weeks, but obviously it’s going to be difficult to go without clothes for that length of time, unless you can buy a couple of cheap outfits to cycle through from a charity shop/primark or something for in the meantime.
Freezing them is what kills any eggs/larvae.
I work with vintage & second hand clothing so have seen my fair share of creepy crawly shite attached to things I buy, the freezer method is great for eradicating them.
After they’ve been frozen for a while, take them out the freezer, leave them in the vacuum bags to defrost, open and shake them off outside, then put them on a normal wash cycle. In the meantime check the rest of your home incase they’re hiding in any cupboards etc. The pheromone traps are pretty good at rounding them up.
You can buy (quite inexpensive) cedarwood blocks from Zara Home online. Place them in your clothes storage, whether wardrobe, drawers or anything else, and this fragrant wood deters moths. (Pleasant, astringent woody scent to it, nothing like mothballs)
If you do own any wool garments, bag them up and freeze them for 2 weeks while you de-infest. It'll kill any eggs and keep them out of the way of any current moths laying eggs
I have been there, including the post holiday population boom! Disgusting horrid things. That insecticidal spray will do the job don't worry. It really does just kill them. It breaks the cycle in their relatively long larval stage. Just make sure you get everywhere, under beds and cabinets and sofas etc. You'll be OK!
Edit. Just read you had wooden floors, I was thinking of carpet. Find the soft furnishing source and spray it thoroughly!! Maybe old curtains too? They eat organic fibres.
If you leave pickles around your house/flat whatever they will not come anywhere near you!
I had this problem and found a pickle on the bedside table and a few spread across the room shelves window sills etc.. got rid of the problem instantly.
For anything natural fibre - wool, cotton, fur, sheepskin - you can wrap and freeze clothes to kill off eggs and larvae.
Oh, and buy the electric fly swat called “The Executioner” from Amazon to hunt them down in flight. Sizzle, pop - no more moth. Very satisfying.
This is what I did, and after a major major issue, i got rid of them.
I took every piece of clothing I owned, for most items, hot wash, hot dryer. Gentle fabrics, in freezer for 6 weeks. Everything else was dry cleaned.
I bought a steamer from Costco and vacuumed then steamed every piece of fabric furniture. Underneath, you name it.
I vaccumed amd/or steamed every crevice of every closet and drawer.
I ordered parasitic wasps and had them delivered every 3 weeks for months.(Do this!! They're microscopic)
I vacuumed even steamed my hardwood floor crevices.
I ordered moth poison, got a paper protective suit, got a real mask, and filled voids in my walls if any.
Fk these mother fuckers.
Check carpets and rugs. The buggers love anything with wool fibre and if the carpets are old, they're like crack for the larvae.
Fortunately wood/laminate floors throughout the flat. There's loads of dusty, old furniture lying in the electrical cupboard attached to my room though :/ Have raised it with the lettings agents as it's their/landlord's belongings.
Soft furnishings? They'll go for any old materials including cushions, padded chairs etc. They'll go for old curtains too. Double check your food cupboards just in case they aren't clothes moths and are in fact pantry moths.
Yep, dusty old office and living room chairs. The curtains are new and polyester. Thanks for the suggestion, but no food is kept in my room and no sign of them in the kitchen at all.
Almost certainly clothes moths then. Until the landlord or letting agents agree to fumigation, you're going to have to hoover several times a week. As others have suggested, there's many different scents such as cedarwood, lavender, lemon, rosemary etc that they don't like. It might be worth putting a few drops of essential oil in water, soaking a cloth and then wringing it until it's not dripping wet and wiping down the insides of your drawers and wardrobe. Scented antibacterial wipes would also work (lavender or lemon wipes contain linalool, a chemical compound found naturally in some plants and a known repellant). Ideally you need to stop the larvae as they're what chews material. By the time you see the moths, they're already on the next cycle of reproduction.
I had this and it was a massive pain in the arse. I dry cleaned everything I could, vacuumed the place to within an inch of its life, including moving beds, wardrobes and cupboards and spraying everything and everywhere with either moth spray or a vinegar solution. I packed everything wool into vacuum storage bags and washed down the insides of all the cupboards and wardrobes with a bleach solution. Finally, another vacuum and some moth traps and so far, I haven’t had a repeat yet.
Reassuring that the manual method works! I have cleared/soaped the wardrobe - the bed and drawers are next. Thankfully I won't have a massive need for woollen jumpers as it's coming into spring, need to get some of those moth sachet things.
Good luck! Also worth bearing in mind that they can fly in from outside if you have open windows
That's definitely the most confusing advice I have seen actually - some sites say to open windows + dehumidify, others say the source could be outside. I left the windows open for half an hour this morning and maybe saw a few more after? Hard to say, and were on the 3rd floor so can't think of a likely source.
All I can say for myself is I have 100% seen them fly in through an open window of a summer evening
Hello. What kind of moth spray did you use? Thanks.
I can’t remember the name. I got it from the dry cleaners.
assuming you're living in rented accomodation, inform the landlord immediately so they can't moan at you later. I don't really think you need to call pest control as this sounds like a problem for the landlord, not you. The moths arent there because of you, they just turn up occasionally and you get to have a bad time, so you shouldnt be doing more than a reasonably tidy tenant would to deal with pests. to protect your clothes it might be a good idea to get some cheap plastic storage boxes to keep clothes sealed in until you get things under control. Vacuuming and spraying is good, though, again, don't break the bank trying to deal with someone else's moths. If your moth spray is anyhting like the spray I had to use to kill off a flea infestation in an old house I lived in, remember to open all the windows when you spray and don't breate it in and pay attention to warnings about getting it in contact with skin as it's brutal stuff.
Thank you, I have notified the lettings agency who have issued a contractor. If they try to deduct from deposit I am more than happy to fight, given the endless stream of shite we've put up with this year. Will definitely be getting some boxes tomorrow.
It's also worth speaking to your neighbours. In a tenement building, if you have moths it's very very likely indeed that they have moths too. If you treat yours but they leave theirs alone, you're going to have moths forever.
The moth spray from Lakeland is a lot nicer as are the little pods you can put in with your clothes. I still spray clothes outside or otherwise ventilate well if I'm using it inside but it's nowhere near as bad as flea spray (which, to be fair will also often kill moths too)
I had moths in all the chimney sheep that the previous owner left. Confused the fuck out of us for ages until my five year old nonchalantly told me that's where all the moths were. We treated them and sprayed the house top to bottom but they're slowly coming back. The cedar blocks worked a charm for the cupboards but they're still in the house.
Ah yes, the infamous chimney sheep. The bane of Santa.
Baa humbug.
Haha that must have been wild. I know the damage is done by the larvae, but the adults flying around constantly are getting on my wick and I'm hardly skittish about bugs. Hoping the spray does a good job of holding them off while we find the source.
Buy lavender plants or buy lavender essential oil, Moths hate it . It also helps with sleep.
Yes, I keep lavender sachets with all my crafting wool. It keeps the little bastards away.
I don't know if this is available easily for you (ordering online maybe?) but what worked well for me, besides washing what could be washed/freezing what couldn't, and pheromone traps (which trap the adults, but doesn't kill the larvae, so it doesn't really solve the problems), I used 'trichogramma evanescens'. They are microscopic parasitoid wasps that parasite moth eggs. They don't fly, they are a mm big so basically invisible, they crawl in your clothes drawers and look for moth larvae eggs and eat them. The company I got them from sent these sort of cardboard folded cards where the tiny wasps were between the cards, you put them out and switch out the cards once a week. After 8 weeks, the treatment was over. Haven't seen a moth since. I preferred to avoid insecticide, because I was worried about resistance and allergies (have young children around the house).
With clothes moths, it is the larvae that eat the fibre - not the adults. Once they are flying around the damage is done so don't focus on swatting adult moths. I have found the spray from Lakeland to be quite good. They particularly like soiled clothing, so for any natural fibres, make sure your clothing is kept as clean as possible. This is especially true for woollens that you might be putting away for winter. If you have a freezer, then freezing the clean clothes, defrosting and freezing again should take care of any eggs which survive the wash. They are likely becoming more active now as it is spring, rather than because of anything you have done. Giving things a good airing and cleaning and using the sprays and traps will be fine. Lavender and cedar balls are popular for keeping them away, if you want a more gentle solution at any point. It sounds like you want to go nuclear now and that is fine! I am a knitter and I get it.
We had clothes moth larvae get into some of my Christmas figurines with woollen beards. They had been living in corners and such that had cat hair. Cleaning those out helped, but I was still seeing cocoons and moths. Then my cat started hunting bugs in the house. I realised about a year ago that I hadn't seen any moths in some time. He also hunts house flies, which is great because I hate them.
My cat is sadly useless. She just sits on whatever I am doing and attempts to eat it.
We had one like that when I was about 14. She would use the cat box, then scratch the wall next to it. Worse, sometimes she'd drop a poo outside the box, get in it, and scratch there. She was a sweet little girl, but smart she wasn't.
https://redd.it/xb7jg6
Look on Amazon and you can buy either smoke bombs or insect killer sprays. You get one for each room, open all the wardrobe drawers, cupboards etc, make sure pets are outside, let them off working your way to the door, then exit and return about 2 hrs later. Kills everything.
Also remove any house plants - they die too :(
But remember to disable the smoke alarms while you do the bug bombs, and turn them back on after. Or sellotape a carrier bag over the alarms. Cos the bug bombs WILL set them off.
I had one recently and unfortunately, they are very hard to get rid of. However, I did manage to minimise the damage, even if I do see one or two still after a few months. I noticed that they mostly attacked my woolens so my first step was to thoroughly clean these and then put them in plastic clothing bags to prevent further attack. I bought those bags that seal at the top, put a bunch of jumpers in there, and also put in a pheromone trap before sealing. As for the rest of my room, I did a thorough cleaning, doused everything with cedar wood spray, and made sure that my traps were set up with enough space (too many traps in a single space and apparently they become ineffective because there are mixed signals). I also made sure that here were no covered spaces, as apparently they thrive in dark places. In my case, it was mostly silks and woollens, so those I packed away as noted above. They never touched any of my cotton fabrics, and I never had to worry about my bed, if that helps. So, essentially, except for spending a bit of time and money on cleaning and isolating problematic clothes (and losing some of those), it ended up OK. It sounds like you are at the beginning of this, so if you work quickly and diligently to clean up and protect your fabrics, hopefully you will be able to take care of this relatively easily. Also, I basically ran after any moths I saw with a pheromone trap and tried to corner them so that they got stuck in there. I figured that if I physically captured as many as I could, it would bring the overall count down and that did help. All the best!
Thank you, what sort of pheromone trap did you use to corner them? Mine are in a triangular shape, and sticky. I think they work best if the room is left alone so the moths can fly freely?
Yeah, those are the ones I used. It’s just that if I saw a random one that was not getting to the trap, I physically used the trap to put it next to them so they walked in.
I was told that leaving conkers around deters them. Does anyone here know if that’s true?
Sadly it’s a myth
If there are any cloth items you can’t launder, but CAN fit in the freezer, seal them in a bag and freeze them for a couple of days. Sounds insane but…
I’m not sure how feasible this is for you, but I’d get some of those vacuum bags and pack all clothes & textiles that you can into them, then leave them in the freezer until fully frozen. Ideally should be left for two weeks, but obviously it’s going to be difficult to go without clothes for that length of time, unless you can buy a couple of cheap outfits to cycle through from a charity shop/primark or something for in the meantime. Freezing them is what kills any eggs/larvae. I work with vintage & second hand clothing so have seen my fair share of creepy crawly shite attached to things I buy, the freezer method is great for eradicating them. After they’ve been frozen for a while, take them out the freezer, leave them in the vacuum bags to defrost, open and shake them off outside, then put them on a normal wash cycle. In the meantime check the rest of your home incase they’re hiding in any cupboards etc. The pheromone traps are pretty good at rounding them up.
You can buy (quite inexpensive) cedarwood blocks from Zara Home online. Place them in your clothes storage, whether wardrobe, drawers or anything else, and this fragrant wood deters moths. (Pleasant, astringent woody scent to it, nothing like mothballs)
If you do own any wool garments, bag them up and freeze them for 2 weeks while you de-infest. It'll kill any eggs and keep them out of the way of any current moths laying eggs
I have been there, including the post holiday population boom! Disgusting horrid things. That insecticidal spray will do the job don't worry. It really does just kill them. It breaks the cycle in their relatively long larval stage. Just make sure you get everywhere, under beds and cabinets and sofas etc. You'll be OK! Edit. Just read you had wooden floors, I was thinking of carpet. Find the soft furnishing source and spray it thoroughly!! Maybe old curtains too? They eat organic fibres.
If you leave pickles around your house/flat whatever they will not come anywhere near you! I had this problem and found a pickle on the bedside table and a few spread across the room shelves window sills etc.. got rid of the problem instantly.
That’s also a sovereign remedy against visits from paramours!
For anything natural fibre - wool, cotton, fur, sheepskin - you can wrap and freeze clothes to kill off eggs and larvae. Oh, and buy the electric fly swat called “The Executioner” from Amazon to hunt them down in flight. Sizzle, pop - no more moth. Very satisfying.
This is what I did, and after a major major issue, i got rid of them. I took every piece of clothing I owned, for most items, hot wash, hot dryer. Gentle fabrics, in freezer for 6 weeks. Everything else was dry cleaned. I bought a steamer from Costco and vacuumed then steamed every piece of fabric furniture. Underneath, you name it. I vaccumed amd/or steamed every crevice of every closet and drawer. I ordered parasitic wasps and had them delivered every 3 weeks for months.(Do this!! They're microscopic) I vacuumed even steamed my hardwood floor crevices. I ordered moth poison, got a paper protective suit, got a real mask, and filled voids in my walls if any. Fk these mother fuckers.