Mothra

When I got home from work yesterday, I finally did something I've been putting off for weeks: I cleaned out our kitchen pantry in hopes of curtailing Moth Invasion 2007.

Pantry moths are both icky and annoying. They're icky because they and their larvae end up in both open and sealed food packages. (How they manage to worm their way into an unopened canister of oatmeal is beyond me, but I've seen first-hand that they can do it.) There's little that's more disgusting than scooping up a cup of white rice to toss in the rice cooker and realizing that some of the grains are moving, that they're actually moth larvae. Blecchhh! And they're annoying because they fly everywhere and land on everything, and when you smash them they leave a greasy, dusty smear that can be tough to wipe off. (By the way, in case you are unfamiliar with these creatures, that photo is greatly enlarged; they're only about a centimeter long.)

I'd never encountered pantry moths until a few years ago, shortly after Sean and I bought our house. We probably bought something that was infested with the things, and the little buggers spread to other opened items in our pantry. I've cleaned out the pantry a couple of times in the past few years to rid ourselves of the things, but they always return and this summer the moth population seems to have exploded. They love grain products: things like flour, cornmeal, cereal, crackers, and rice are where we always find them. They flit all over the house, but the kitchen pantry is definitely their headquarters (hence the name "pantry moth," I suppose), so I knew where my first line of attack should be.

It took about two hours to take everything out of the pantry, sort through what could be kept and what should be tossed, then scrub the inside of the cupboard clean. Moths were not the pantry's only denizens -- I also found a bevy of daddy long legs and two black widows. The spiders, especially the daddy long legs, looked plump and well-fed; I guess they'd been feasting on the moths, though not fast enough, in my opinion. Anyway, anything insectoid or arachnoid had to go, so there were many little deaths at my house last night. Before we put anything back in the pantry, Sean and I went to Target and bought a bunch of airtight containers to store open food in. We're also thinking about buying some food-safe moth traps. We'll see if those measures ultimately defeat the little monsters.

The big problem is, now the pantry is so nice and clean that I feel the entire kitchen needs a thorough scrubbing. And once I'm done with the kitchen, I'm sure I'll want to move on to the rest of the house. I regard this as a problem because I loathe housework, yet every now and then I take a good look at my surroundings and realize I'm living in near-squalor. I always use my dust allergy as an excuse not to clean on a regular basis, but the sad truth is that I have a pretty high tolerance for filth and just can't be bothered most of the time. Now, though, I feel the dreaded periodic urge to purge stealing over me and fear that I will shortly be spending a great deal of my free time tidying my house and perhaps even -- gasp! -- the yard as well.

Why can't I develop normal fixations like everyone else?