I might have "pantry moths" ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!
for about a week, i've found small brownish moths in the house - I figured if a window or something had an opening, i'd get a fly and a mosquito too, not just them!!! They don't really fly around much, just hang out on the wall, skinny no real wings sticking out, and they dont' fly away when you grab 'em with a kleenex
then someone at work said it was probably pantry moths!! as in, their kids are thriving in my rice or flour or something!!! ugh i want to hurl !!!
so they recommended i shut up all the kitchen cupboards, and after 24 hours open 'em up - and there should be a few hanging out on the cabinet doors
They also said to HOPE it's pantry moths and not clothing moths - ugh but in food, that's utterly VILE!! and my house is spic and span!!! honest!!! LOL
so I told DH after we open the doors tomorrow and if they're there, we're going TO town, EVERY SINGLE item of food is going in the garbage i don't care what it is, if it's not in a TIN it's going!!!
Has anyone ever had such a thing??????????????????????????????
A few years ago I got those nasty little creatures. I had to do just what you said...throw everything away. I has sealed boxes and bags of food that had them inside. I sobbed as I cleaned the kitchen. I felt like I was somekind of failure. My home is not sterile, but it isn't a place you would expect to have bugs in the food. I threw out every thing that was not in a metal can or glass jar. Then I scrubbed my kitchen 3 times with bleach. I have never had them since.
I quickly read it as "panty moths" and was wondering how moths in the underwear drawer made you never want to eat again.
Anyway, sorry you may have the moths. They are insidious little buggers! It has nothing to do with your cleanliness, the eggs are often in grains and packaged goods and you don't know they are there until the moths appear, seemingly out of nowhere!
There are some other things you can do to get rid of them as well. They sell some strips that catch the moths. Go to amazon and type on "pantry moth strip".
I have never heard of them! Ick! I am hoping that they are a humidity loving creature. I live in a very dry area and we don't have many of the bugs that like humidity.
And... if I'm really honest about my housekeeping... I would probably be the one who would have them if any one does.............
I've had them too, and they are a pain to get rid of. You probably bought something from the store that had them in it. If you notice when you are shopping you might see the moths in the store, I have. I stopped shopping at that store. I cleaned and threw out everything. If you use pesticides to get rid of them, make sure you spray in the cracks because they lay the eggs in all the areas where you can't get to. I went crazy spraying in all the crevices in my kitchen. I let it air out and dry and then washed the surfaces where food might come in contact with. I found spray online that was meant to get rid of them and it came with a long straw-like attachment to get into the cracks. I don't know if that was totally necessary, but it got rid of them and made me feel better.
I've had them. They often originate in unprocessed foods (like lentils or brown rice) but even in the grocery stores they can spread to unopened packages of crackers, cereal, and even dog food. The larva can burrow through fairly thick cardboard or plastic (but not glass or metal).
The pantry pest traps are best used as a monitoring device. I doubt you can actually get rid of them with the traps.
You will need to go through all the food in your house that is not in the freezer or stored in impermeable containers. Throw away any food that shows signs of infestation. If it looks OK and you want to keep it, you can freeze the food overnight to make sure (the grain moths are not cold tolerant), but if you don't have room in the freezer for all that food, you will need to find a way to isolate the food that's already been frozen in a safe place.
Also, make sure that you don't have little spills of flour our whatever in the corners of your pantry shelves. If there are any eggs in those corners, the problem will just come back.
Trazey I'm so sorry this is horrible!!! I am the worst when it comes to ANY kind of bugs, but I hate, Hate, HATE spiders, mosquito hawks, and...you guessed it MOTHS! I never knew about these things....I can't beleive you can get them from the grocery store that is SO vile...YUCK
Good luck with getting rid of them, and thanks for the appetite suppressant!
luckily all food in my house is in this one big cupboard, so it should be contained in there (i'm referring to it now as the gateway to ****). I'm a bug phobe, terrified of anything that moves LOL so i can't go inspecting everything to see if it's ok or not -- everything's been compromised in my opinion except for cans, so every last thing (sigh...bye bye kashi cereal and bars) is going outside TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!! no mercy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then bleach
Then spray
repeat
and DH will remove the shelves to be sure every nook & cranny is cleaned, and put caulking in any crevices. WOW i would NOT want to be a moth baby tonight!!! heheehhehe
When I was a poor single Mom, living in low-cost housing, everybody got flour weevils. The first time, I cleaned everything out and threw away all the 'open' boxes, anything they could have gotten into, and started double-security with tupperware bins. The problem was, not everybody cleaned up at the same time, so there were reinfestations all the time. GROSS!!! We had to have a committee meeting with all the residents, teaching everybody how to get rid of them, and we had to do it for 2 families who couldn't be bothered, so they wouldn't spread again. One family wanted us to reimburse them for all the stuff we threw away!! (That didn't happen, we offered to put everything back, and they changed their minds once they had a good look!)
Teehee! We had to learn a song about those little (disgusting!) guys in third grade! It went like THIS!
5x5 is 25!
5x6 is 30!
5x7 is 35 and
5x8 is 40!
Don't want no Weevily wheat! Don't want no poorly!
Take some flour, and half an hour and
Bake a cake for Char-lie!
So now you even have a little song to sing while you commit buggy genocide!
I had them about 5 years ago and it was awful. So much food wasted and soooo disgusting. I even had to throw away several bottles of spices. Turns out I hadn't closed the lids as well as I should and the moths had gotten it that way.
Like H8cake, I also saw them in a dollar store one day (near the jiffy cornbread mix). We almost ran out of the store. That was right after our "infestation" and I was terrified they would follow me home. That is probably where I brought them home from when I had them!
When I was a teenager, I made a batch of rice krispie treats, I had eaten one or maybe two, I've forgotten, before I realized that there were weevils in the rice krispies! Looking back, I wonder did I make them in the dark or what?? I've not made the mistake again, I always look at my food before eating it now.
Unfortunately, they aren't just confined to humid environments. We live in NM (read: desert) and my mom got a really serious infestation of them. She cleaned out her pantry 3 times before she realized that they came in with the pistachios she hadn't thrown away! So, not just flour and lentil products... apparently they live in shelled nuts, too.
Good luck getting rid of the little buggers, they sure are a pain.
I may never eat again!
