Many people are all too familiar with the scent of mothballs, probably having smelled them after peeking inside their grandparent’s closet. If you haven’t ever encountered a closet full of mothballs, you’re not missing much, as they don’t have the most pleasant of scents. So, why would anyone fill their closet of nice clothes with these smelly things? To keep those clothes safe from clothes moths. Clothes moths are the ultimate enemy of you and your wardrobe. They will tear right through everything from your nicest cashmere sweater to the cotton t-shirt you wear to bed. To make things worse, the most common clothes moth species will devour much more than just your clothes.

The webbing clothes moth is a fairly cosmopolitan species, and the species you are most likely to come across in the country. In addition to being the most common, they are also one of the most destructive. They will pretty much feed on any kind of material they can find in your home, including clothing, rugs, carpets, upholstered furniture, furs, stored wool, and even things like the felts inside pianos and brush bristles made from animal hair. Nothing is safe from these things. However, it’s not the adult moths that wreak such destruction but rather the larvae.

Adult clothes moths are very active, and are solely used as a means to enter the homes in which their larvae will find food. They can fly considerable distances and fit into the smallest of cracks in windows or walls. The females attach around 40 to 50 eggs to the threads of the clothes they are infesting and then die, having served their purpose of transporting their children to a food-rich environment. Once those eggs hatch, the real fun has just begun. The larvae are quite small and can be easily missed, as they tend to stay in the dark, hidden parts of your clothes, such as under collars or the cuffs of sleeves. While some larvae crawl around without any protective barrier to hide them, most spin either frail, silken tubes or tunnels in which they feed and live, or flat matts of silk that they crawl under. It is this webbing that gives the webbing clothes moth its name, and is also what characterizes an infestation.

Have you ever found an infestation of clothes moths in your home?