The other night, as Z sat unsuspectingly on the couch, enjoying a quiet night in, I discovered an intruder in our kitchen cupboard.
A sole dreaded pantry moth. Bain of my mother’s existence, and of bags of starchy foodstuffs everywhere.
“Oh God, Honey!” I cried. “We have one – we have a moth!”
“What?” he said, getting up from his seat. “Did the cat catch something?”
“No! Look!” I pointed to the cupboard wall, before killing the moth. Then I opened all the cupboard doors. “Where are they? Where are the eggs? We have to kill them all.”
You know, Lady Macbeth style. via GIPHY
As he held the garbage, I dumped anything that could be infested – bags of rice and couscous, a couple of old bags of nuts. I took all the flour and sugar from another cupboard and put them in the freezer, my skin crawling the whole time.
You guys, pantry moths don’t play around. If you see one, that means they’ve probably been living in your home for weeks. Maybe even 6 weeks of possibly eating the same food at their larvae.
I know, right? You’d Lady Macbeth it too.
The next day, we went on a cleaning and organization binge. I bought new jars, and we stayed up late reorganizing our spice drawer.
It’ll take a few weeks to know if they’ve all been killed. In the meantime, I learned that Martha Stewart has free printable spice labels, for those interested. And others have some great spice drawer organization tips.
