Moth problem - no end in sight

[AllStarBySmashMouth]

My house has had a moth problem for years, returning every summer. They are, as far as I can tell, white shouldered moths.

I truly can’t understand where they are coming from. In the time I’ve had them, my entire kitchen has been ripped out and replaced so it can’t be there. My living room was emptied and the floor lifted for work in the foundations, so they aren’t there. I had a clear out of the bedroom cupboards and pulled everything out, they aren’t in there. I knocked down the cupboard under my stairs and emptied it into one big space, so they aren’t there. I decorated both bedrooms and moved all the furniture and cleaned under all of them. That is my entire house. I can’t find them anywhere.

Does anyone have any advice? It’s really getting me down but I don’t know what else I can do.

Carpets?

You need new carpets

Loft insulation? Something in loft like a rug or a coat or even worse, a feather cushion?
Under a chair? Cane furniture, wicker chair, leather furnishing? Antique books? Back of an old picture? Any old glue can be a source.

I didn’t know about glue, I’ll look at photos

I don’t have any cane, wicker, or leather furniture. The loft insulation is an idea though, I hadn’t thought of that.

One thing though is that white shouldered moths are pantry moths, not carpet moths. Which is why I’m so confused since my entire kitchen was ripped out. I don’t know how they’ve stuck around or where they are hiding.

Apparently they do like carpets and clothing as well - just eat anything basically. Do you use a lot of moth repellent? Nuke 'em?

I am not familiar with white shouldered moths but I would start by assuming food. They would only need the tiniest gaps to move around which are almost impossible to eliminate.

Do you have an attached garage? Sometimes mice will attack bags of plaster etc that we wouldn't think of as edible or papers, corn based cat litter.

Do you have no idea of whereabouts in the house they are even? Have you tried keeping doors closed religiously for a few weeks to try to pin down which room is worst affected? Even kitchen/not kitchen would be a start.

These things can have quite a long life cycle so it's a question of repeatedly catching & killing over and over as you can't eliminate them until all the ridiculously tiny, long lived eggs have hatched. You might have already solved the "big" thing.

Presumably you've tried moth bombing? I would recommend getting professionals in if funds will stretch, it could save a lot of work and money on chipping away at the problem.

I am sure that I read a news article recently where the moths were in the wall insulation. The house was so badly infested it got handed back legally to the previous owners.

Check the food in your cupboards. If your food went into storage then put back into your new kitchen they could’ve infected your new food. They’re very difficult to see. You need to bin all the food and clean cupboard with strong chemicals.

Moth bombs, little cones that you light, were the only thing that cleared our moth problem. You can get them on Amazon.

We lived in a house with these once, they were coming from underneath the stairs, which attached to the kitchen wall with cabinets that they seemed to spawn from.

We had clothes moths that were breeding in wool loft insulation. The company had sold us an early version that wasn't treated well enough.

Do you have any house plants? We have loads, and I found our moths had made cocoons there.

Also, I admire how far you've been willing to go so far! We have carpet, and the carpets survived the moths.

I would buy sticky moth traps and hang them up around the house, you can see which rooms have the highest concentration of moths. Once you have worked that out, move any heavy furniture and sprinkle moth powder (wear a mask), that soon disturbs the moths, vacuum them up as they escape the powder. Then you will need to dampen the carpets with moth killer, leave for 30 mins and check for moth maggots that live deep In the fibres, vacuum and repeat until no more maggots crawl out....vacuum, sprinkle with powder and return the furniture. Repeat every spring. You might need to buy new carpets as all the vacuuming may loosen gnawed fibres and reveal holes! Or you could just buy new carpets in the first place. Avoid wool carpets, or make sure they are treated.