Death to all clothes moths!

[Squid Vicious]

Despite trying pheromone traps, moth balls and cedar wood I still have a major problem with clothes moths.

Missus not happy as she buys nice clothes and the moths have been tucking in

The sticky pheromone traps have been pretty good, trapping large numbers of moths but seemingly not enough to stop them breeding

Need something effective but also need to consider the cat - are there any options other than the nuclear option and getting a professional in?

 

[NoobCannon]

Never seen them before.

Sell the cat and then nuke from orbit

 

[d_brennen]

If you have carpet, get rid. Also, hover the bottom of the wardrobe religiously for a while.

Never seen them myself but my local pub had it's rather tatty carpet devoured by them (or rather the larvae)

 

[LuckyBenski]

I have loads in this house and always have since moving in (7 years). They spring up when it gets warmer indoors - seems like once when summer starts, and another when the central heating starts coming on.

Weirdly though, I don't think they've eaten more than one item of clothing? A wool coat had one little nibble taken out. I did find loads of the Hessian backing to cheap carpet had been munched though. Loads.

Can't figure out if they came from the cheap carpet I inherited or the old house just has them. They don't seem to be damaging things but they seem like a risk

 

[Plec]

We had this after the summer of 2015'ish - we tried to resolve through mix of spray and tape but failed. I think you have to catch the source very early - ours was behind the piano (they like dark spaces) and right where our bi-fold doors were open most of the previous summer (how they get in - no pets, and tidy freak wife.) :/

In the end, we ripped out carpets downstairs and subbed for wooden floors and had pre-treated carpet fitted on stairs.

Upstairs, where we were not sure if there was a problem or not, we sprayed edges of carpets, inside cupboards etc ourselves - 3 years later no moths (to date...).

TBH, it's seems like pot luck - we had friends who literally had their whole internals bombed with anti-moth crap by pro's, changed all their carpets etc... couple of years on, white little larvae/eggs have started to appear on their ceiling :/ (This was all in the same season and area - which apparently isn't unusual for some areas to be prone at a particular moment in time. We're rural but city places are hit just as bad as far as i know).

 

[Felix]

It's the larvae that eats the clothes and carpets not the moths. You need to vacuum as much as possible but depending on the infestation you might never get rid of them until you call in the professionals or rip the carpets out.

 

[Plec]

It's the larvae that eats the clothes and carpets not the moths.

Yep, they gorge themselves on your carpet (in our case), cloths etc and then crawl up to the wall/ceiling, hang out for a bit then hatch into moths. We were hoovering 3 times a day and hand hoovering any moth/casings that we saw - and then realised life was too short when it was apparent we hadn't caught them early enough...

That said - if you catch them early enough it's very possible to stop them from getting a foothold - our problem was that they nested/laid their eggs behind the one piece of furniture we only moved once a year. And being iron framed that was a PITA and a very quick process when we had enough bodies to help. So, the initial tell tale signs were missed - especially as we thought the odd hanging casing was a weird insect coming in. Little did we know what was going on behind and inside the piano :/

 

[Squid Vicious]

I think we may have missed the opportunity to stop them then!

Think the source is probably the cupboard under the stairs which still has carpet and a plentiful supply of jackets to nosh on - still easy enough to rip the carpet out there.
Hallway carpet is also only a small job to sort out as was thinking of tiling that anyway.

Cat's not going to be happy if we remove all the carpet, she already has issues on the other areas without carpet

 

[Munchies]

Lock the cat out for the day and use a smoke bomb or 2?