Bugging Out (Part One)

So you'll never guess what I'v been up to...

Traveling? I wish. Sunny beach vacationing with the fam? I wish. Nope more domestication it would seem. That might sound a little boring until you read this post.

My hair has been frizzy! I shiver with disgust. My house turned inside out. Chuck it out, toss it out, groooossed out! Chuck it out, toss it out, groooossed out! Like the little train who thought she couldn't, suprisingly I'm chugging away like a busy worker bee. I'm a part of the senior moth swat team. LOL Ok, Ok I'll get right to it.

It turns out we brought home some infested oatmeal. Yep. Ever hear of meal moths? I never really knew much about them until they started to appear in my kitchen. Nasty but harmless thankfully. It took me four days to dump all our dry foods into the trash, clean out our pantry and cabinets than replace our new food in new airtight containers. I didn't have airtight containers so I went out and purchased two cases of Mason jars and a few hundred dollars worth of cereal sized containers for larger items, like cereal etc. What a mess! My kitchen and life was torn apart. My cabs and pantry were empty, wiped down while canned items and salvageable stuff sat on our dining room table and kitchen counters. I hate counter clutter so this was super stressful like jars of pasta sauce for me. Four days of living like this! I filled our town garbage dumpster that we put curbside full of possible tainted food. (6 garbage bags full) Past few days we're glad to only see a few moths fly around rather than the dozen we were seeing when the infestation outbreak was realized.

I'm a stocker up-per. My grandmother had a pantry and my mother had a pantry. I've long sense had the desire to be a frugal shopper (within reason) We do buy our cereal at the wholesale club b/c we go through so much of it. I pride myself in my savvy assertiveness to check the weekly paper and online coupon outlets to combine and match a coupon with a great sale. I've gotten pretty good at it. I even get things for free on occasion if the deal is right. Soo naturally we have a pantry and some cabs with some stuff in them. I don't buy the store out but I do a great job stocking up. Recently cake mix went on sale for .77 and I picked up two mixes for my hubbys cake in Dec and another pair for myself since my b-day is next month (that he could make for me). We had 4 pkgs of brownies as well. It's easy to have some on hand to whip up a snack or take to a gathering. I think you follow where I'm going with this. Well sad to see it all go, out into the trash went all our dry foods along with the time it took to marry coupons with great sales. It was depressing. Out went our boxes of different types of pasta (6 of them). Out went our cereal, pancake mix and anything else dry even if it wasn't opened. I actually cried. (more on that later)

You should know any dry food (cereal, pancake mix, brownie & cake mix beans, rice, pasta granola etc, bird food or dog food from the market can come with the moth eggs (nearly impossible to see) and the shopper never knows they are there until the moths come out. I found the worm or larva in my cereal - on my spoon with milk dripping, EWWW. It was squirming on my spoon as to say "help I'm drowning". NOT what I wanted to wake up to. You can imagine my screech! I'm a fairly clean person and it's been quite hard living life knowing we have bugs. Being that we are in the northeast we don't tend to see any bugs except the common house spider and a lost black ant or two that's made it's way in. What really got me was within the same week I opened up the twist cap off my son's baby food (rice cereal) and a mealworm larva fell out. Awww! (shiver). I'm suspecting the outbreak was from the container of oatmeal. Who knows they spread from food to food but, I had portioned out individual servings of oatmeal into ziplock packets for easy usage rather than buy the sugary packets of oatmeal for the fam. It's a good way to stretch the dollar too. Around the time I was noticing a lot of moths around my cupboards I went in my cabinet and saw a bug flying inside on of those oatmeal sealed ziplock bags! "what in the world?" was my reaction. I've done a lot of research on these pests on the internet and found them to be quite common. The bugs eggs must have been in the oatmeal and one day, they hatched into moths I guess. LOL I'm able to laugh now, but when I was in the BB and beyond store buying my airtight containers I wanted ones that were good enough to be water proof as well. How can I laugh you ask? I struck up a conversation with another shopper in the isle. Low and behold she too had a case of mealmoths in her home some time ago. I was kind of revealed to know I wasn't alone. She willingly shared her experience with me and we grimmest at the annoyance of the mealmoth (Indian Meal Moth) and laughed together. I also happened to run into a friend of mine who was interested to see that I was quite possibly updating and organizing my pantry. Yes I told her, she was correct. But, than I felt I had to tell her why when she made the comment, "things must be good, that's quite an expensive project". I simply said, "I have bugs & therefore have no choice". So she probably won't want to come for dinner for a while but I'm humbled by this whole experience. And yes I can finally laugh about it. My friend wished me good luck and continued shopping with her hubby.

It's been a few weeks now since stripping everything bear & wiping out cleaning and vacuuming; though the moths still keep showing up. I can say with confidence, I know they will be gone in a matter of time. How long it will take is anyone's guess. I have to kill the cycle. If they have no access to food (hence the airtight containers and constant vacuuming) eventually they'll die. I could use poison but I found an article that suggested bay-leaves. So we have bay-leaves in our naked cabinets. I couldn't put food back where I found the initial outbreak. I even scattered bay-leaves around the inside of my pantry. Wives tale? Who knows but I don't want to put poison around my little kids. Especially since my son is starting to walk & cruise around. I hope the moths and their cycle die off sooner than later. God knows I want them gone yesterday!

Like most bugs they are attracted to lights & are easy to spot and kill. They do leave quite a dusty mess on surfaces when squished. With an almost three year old and an eight month old I have to keep the vacuum handy to collect all the cheerios & crumbs that hit the floor. I'd say I vacuum at least three times a day now. My quick stickvac now lives outside since I don't want it to spread and contaminate. That thing has no bag to empty, just a filter to shake in the garbage. I'm waiting for the cold air. Freezing temps seem to kill the cycle so then I can shake the filter into the outside garbage and return it to the house BUT, who knows I may just end up throwing the stick vac in the trash too. Crazy? Maybe just a little groused out at this point.

There is more to this story... as a christian it's moments like these that God always uses to grow a person. I've been eager to type out the story and share. It's almost midnight and I should be off to bed, my wee little ones will wake me quite early but I just had to start somewhere because I want to share my story. Now you know why I've titled this part one. I have a picture of our new organized pantry with airtight neatly labeled dry food products. It's almost like something out of a M. Stewart magazine. Almost. Oh I could rant and rant some more about these darn moths but I'll save you from all of that & share the good that's come from it in part two. So now that you've had an intro, pray for me regarding the bugs and stay tuned to read part two. I promise I'll try not to keep you waiting.
Best,