If you’ve never heard of pantry moths, consider yourself lucky! Not so long ago, I was lucky in that way. Not anymore. Now, I am extremely familiar with these pesky little things. The whole process starts innocently enough. You notice a tiny moth, or maybe two. Truthfully, I thought nothing of it. I killed them and moved on with my life. After it became a daily thing to see one around the pantry or kitchen, I decided to look up what they were. That’s when the hurting began. See, there is no place that says, oh, these are easy. Just do this and that and they are gone. I almost got the vibe that the internet articles felt bad for me and the battle I was embarking on, even while dispensing valuable advice. 

Step one was hard to swallow. If you don’t have a practically empty freezer at your disposal (if I needed a freezer, why would it be empty?), throw away 70% of the food in your pantry. All baking supplies not in an airtight container (my containers were from my wedding registry, and NOT airtight), all pastas, open snacks and some closed snacks, baking mixes, cake mixes, and anything in flimsy plastic. These dang things can get through flimsy plastic packaging. The only things safe were foil packaging, and canned goods. Oh, and toss those non-airtight flour, sugar, brown sugar, and gluten free flour containers. There is no sentimental space for those wedding registry items in the battle against pantry moths. Since we were going through the entire pantry anyway, we decided to toss any expired canned goods too. Right after we tossed most of our food, I ordered multiple sets of clear pantry airtight containers, because we needed to immediately put any incoming food into these. The internet, oh teller of all truths, said that the earliest stages are nearly invisible, and apparently harmless to ingest, so I could have put food in my freezer for 72 hours and that would kill them. But seriously! The thought of knowingly eating moth eggs makes me feel sick. So, EVERYTHING had to go. 

But we kept seeing them. Turns out, they can get into your spices. In fact, we found them in the sesame seeds and the red pepper. These things prefer red pepper and chili powder, the spicy pests! So, out went ALL the spices! More airtight containers for incoming spices. Then, we found out they could be in coffee and tea. Oddly, our coffee was in unopened foil packaging or an airtight container (yay!), but the tea was tossed. 

Who knows what these pests are costing us! We have no pet food in our pantry anymore, as we feed Apollo upstairs. His food is in an airtight container anyway (whew!). I still have various stored items (think air fryer, crockpot, random coffee carafes I only use at Thanksgiving) on the floor in my dining area, because I am somehow afraid to put them back, like I’m giving them places to hide. We put up pheromone sticky traps in the pantry and spice rack. We have caught some in the pantry. The life cycle of these things is impressive, so we will need to be diligent for six months. And NO PESTICIDES, since it’s in the pantry, obviously. 

The entire pantry has been cleaned. We even pulled our fridge out to get rid of possible food sources that could be under the fridge. Our fridge is weirdly in our pantry… don’t judge. The house came that way. 

Where did these things come from? Likely food brought in from the store. I am NOT sure how a store would be able to combat these things. Since I am putting everything in airtight containers immediately, I am hoping that any new items that I bring in that may be infected will be contained within the container and can be tossed. Now that I know what I am looking for. 

At this point, we are a few weeks away from any remaining live moths dying or ending up on the sticky things, as we only discovered the spices on the weekend. After that, we should be good… unless we find out we are unknowingly harboring a new food source not in an approved container. Then, I will cry.

May you never know the pain of pantry moths. I never even thought about my dried pasta being in cardboard boxes before! Now, I will never forget to package them. 

Have a great week everyone!