To think is impossible to get rid of moths

[Mothnightmare]

Posting here for traffic and advice.

We have been living in our house for 12 years. New build. Last year we started seeing moths; initially in the Master bedroom; we hired someone to come and investigate a do a treatment. He said they were in the headboard so we got rid of it; we got carpet deep cleaned and he did a treatment. We had the headboard for 15 years and never had an issue before.

Moths have not disappeared and I am getting worried. Thinking of replacing the carpet. I discovered it is wool but it was moth protected; perhaps it lost its protection after so many years. I see moths everywhere in the house now. We don’t have carpet downstairs. I just bought mothout in Amazon and is catching some. Some places more than others.

I am getting worried of a big moth infestation. I got 20 moths traps but not sure this will get rid of the problem.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. We paid the man a little fortune last year for nothing. I still feel robbed.

Not sure what I put vote options. But can’t remove it now. I saw another thread and it seems the solution is to get rid of the wool carpe; hopefully that will do the trick

Have you tried moth spray? We had a bad infestation 3 years ago so we masked and googled up, sprayed everywhere with moth spray (just from the supermarket), went out for a few hours, and came home to dead moths everywhere. Opened all the windows for the rest of the day, cleaned up, and that was it.

Moths hate lavender apparently so you could try adding lavender oil to cleaning products and use an essential oil reed diffuser too?

Oh yes the sticky traps are good too, I would keep using those.

What type of moths are they?

Indorex.
There will be nothing crawling in your house for about 6 months.

you probably can't get rid of them completely, but you can keep them under control

• sticky traps are great
• spray on vulnerable fabrics
• put wool / cashmere etc away for the summer in zip-lock bags with moth balls in

and just keep going with this

When we had a bad moth infestation our pest control company came and sprayed the whole house 3 times as the standard treatment. We do still get them, but not in large numbers. We have wool carpets throughout, but only one room was severely affected, so you may not need to get rid of your carpets, but DIY treatments did nothing and i regret wasting weeks on it (and lots of money on cedar balls and lavender which did nothing. Interestingly we never had a single item of clothing nibbled, i think because there was such an ample supply of wool carpet.

We had moths. The only thing that worked was getting a regular treatment done (every 3 months or so) + moth traps. You need to interrupt their breeding cycle, the only way to do that is to keep killing the adults.
Took about a year and a half but it worked.
They are a nightmare so I really feel for you.

The only thing that worked for us were the moth bombs that you light and leave for a few hours. I got them on Amazon.

The only thing that worked for us was getting rid of all of our wool carpets. A bit drastic, but honestly the infestation was horrible and impossible to get rid of.

I've had good success with these: https://dragonfli.co.uk/collections/clothes-moths/products/clothes-moth-egg-sachets

They are expensive, but I've cut down on hoovering to accommodate and not seen any so far this year (year 2 of using)

I'm on year four after buying a second hand settee and that's when the buggers first appeared.

Moth sticky traps plus me catching around 40 a day reduced the problem into year two.

Anyway, year four and I've only caught three over the past few weeks.

I've not used any spray as I have an aquatic turtle and insecticides would harm him, but, persistence is your weapon!

We used to see house moths fairly frequently… Since adopting a cat this has massively reduced.

We'd been battling them for years. Then the neighbours' cat brought fleas into our house & I sprayed all the carpets and sofas with Indorex - it completely eradicated the cat fleas and had the added benefit of getting rid of the moths too.

One of the main reasons I long for world peace is that humanity can then unite against its main adversary, the moth.

Until then, get some mothballs for the wardrobes.

Second the parasitic wasps suggestion - it's really the only sustainable and halfway enduring way to handle them and not nearly as intimidating as it sounds- you can't see them at all with the bare eye. We've used their cousins several times to deal with food infestations with good success.

I feel your pain op. I sometimes think of just burning everything I own and going to live on a mountain somewhere.

I use sticky pheromone traps, but you have to get the right ones that match with the type of moth. And you need to put them somewhere where the air is still. Also they're pretty easy to catch, so when I see one I get rid of it.

They mature more quickly during the warm weather, so you see more of them from about now.

@CranfordScones killing the ones you see won't sort the problem though - they come out at night especially and you can't stay up all night.

I used pheromone traps but heard it could actually draw moths into the house looking for the pheromone source!

I think I could just about get rid of them if I gave up my job and devoted myself to making sure there was no dust under beds or in draw crevices etc.

I remember my mum treating her carpets with lavender oil, they don’t like it, apparently.

I do that too @MrsSkylerWhite . I've done everything except devote my whole life to it!

For example, we had a load because a 100% acrylic jumper my daughter had worn fell behind a chest of drawers. Zero natural fibres but the moths must have liked whatever stains were on it, it was hopping with them. Anything undisturbed, they'll go for.