A Beginners Guide To Moths



You never thought this would happen to you.

It seemed so far detached from your reality that you thought it couldn’t possibly enter your world. How could you have gotten into this state? You’ve seen the impacts. You’ve heard the horror stories. You gain some courage to look again to see if it's true. AH! It’s even worse than you thought. You might never recover from this.

You pace your room.You know you’re being dramatic but the prospect of having to deal with this alone seems like such a tremendous burden. You take in the biggest breath you’ve had all day. And there it is, the proof in the pudding: your favourite woollen jumper, absolutely devoured by moths.


You can’t even begin to count how many holes there are. It feels like it might disintegrate in your hands. You think to yourself, what else got caught in the crossfire?


You always took pride in how well you looked after your clothes. Never washing too often,  never with fabric softener, always folding your jumpers. How could you have been so careless? 

Never mind all that. You’ve got work to do! You need to be meticulous about this. You must get rid of them! You can’t live your life in fear of moths. You didn’t up until now. Pull yourself together! Cry now and get it over with. There’s work to be done. 

You’re going to need to inspect every item of clothing — you might want to block out an hour shift for this activity. After all it's not just wool that the moths fancy a taste of. They’ll eat anything from wool to cotton, linen and silk. You’re done for.

Many items you inspect will have holes, as if they were a feature of the knitwear all along. Others will just have small white speckles, almost dust-like. Don’t be fooled! You’re going to want to handle these with the utmost care. Moth larvae are not to be underestimated. If they escape, you'll never be rid of the buggers. You may even find some live little wriggly things building up an appetite. You could hoover up these small patches of moth larvae dust, but you are going to want to wash your clothing anyway. Please, for the love of god, hand wash your wool with a wool detergent in cold water. You don’t want to go through all of this rigmarole only to shrink your jumpers!

Once your clothes are washed, dried and smelling lovely, pop them in the freezer. Yes, that's correct, the freezer. The sub-zero temperatures aren’t too nice for the moth larvae. I would recommend leaving your items in there for two weeks to be extra sure. Now, understandably, freezer space is precious, so you might want to have your clothes take turns in the small corner that's empty. As a precaution, leave any non-frozen items in sealed plastic bags.

The Final Frontier: The deep clean. You want to hoover every single belonging you own. Your books, your sea shells, your picture frames, bedding, favourite teddy. Nothing is safe and you won’t want to be sorry later.

Time for some hard-hitting truth: all these measures you’ve just put into place, the hours you’ve spent, the labour that's gone into making your home moth-free, it might not ever be enough. Sure, you can buy moth balls, pheromone traps, cedar wood rings, you could even purchase a special parasitic wasp that eats the moth eggs on your behalf. But they’ll never be gone from your life: They’re now a part of you and you will live the rest of your life in fear. You’ll think twice before buying that overpriced cashmere cardigan in pea green, even though it does match your brown trousers perfectly.

What remains of the destruction is a lesson you will never forget. You’ll tell your friends about this battle; strangers; your children; perhaps even your grandchildren.

You will never get over this.

Written piece for AYFP Magazine - 2024