Internet rabbit holes and a war on moths

Critters and dust bunnies are everywhere—and the true definition of Spring cleaning.

I’m convinced that the internet and all the knowledge and (mis)information that can be revealed in a matter of seconds has made me neurotic about very specific things. For example, whenever I’m dealing with an issue that needs urgent answers or find myself with a burning desire to know everything there is to know about “how Axolotl regenerate their limbs” or “how to use Dawn to unclog a drain,” I tend to go down internet rabbit holes for days. I emerge on the other side armed full of (useless) information and a list of actionable tasks.

Some people might call it excessive. I’m a fairly self-aware person, so I’ll concede to that. But this level of obsessiveness has served me well in my career, particularly when conducting UX research. Hey, if you can utilize some of your neurosis in your job, then you are winning somewhere at life.

My propensity to deep dive in search of wisdom has manifested itself many times during the childrearing years when I’ve reached points of tearing out my hair trying to figure out, for example, why my then six month old only ever took 20 minute naps. But it didn’t stop with the baby years. In every phase of motherhood, from newborn exasperation of trying to decipher the difference between baby cries to the hellscape of parenting that is puberty, and all the way to college applications (oh yes, many MANY rabbit holes!), my excessively thorough sleuthing abilities has guided decisions, big and small.

How I even navigated life before the internet is a mystery.

But then again, if knowledge is power and ignorance, bliss, I probably didn’t care that much because I just didn’t know. As you may remember, information wasn’t always this accessible—you actually had to work for it (or at least walk to the library). Now I know things. Too many things. Useless things. Things that take up too much space in my brain, things that I didn’t know I needed and things that I definitely did not need to know.

If you’ve ever tried to self diagnose an ailment, then you know what I’m talking about. If you have children or pets, then you understand this all too well. Try googling pinworms (actually, DO NOT DO THIS) after your child wanders into the living room late at night complaining that her butt itches and you investigate the matter. Seriously, you cannot unsee things.

I didn’t know that parenting would involve so many microscopic organisms and bugs. I didn’t know that parenting would have me googling images of skin conditions trying to diagnose a match (also would not recommend googling any skin ailments). I never imagined that my photo loupe from my analog art school days would be used not for scrutinizing details in photographs, but for identifying tiny eggs and bugs around the house and in my children's hair.

From dealing with pinworms, lice, ringworm, impetigo, and norovirus, to name just a few of the many rabbit holes I’ve gone down, I’ve become adept at proficiently handling some of life’s unpleasant surprises.

A human mold detector

About twenty years ago when we first moved into our apartment and encountered a massive mold issue, I obsessively researched black mold and became well too acquainted with everything mold related—more than any human not in the business should be. I was correcting so-called mold experts who were remediating my apartment and calling out their inspections when they claimed our home was mold-free. My sensitivity to mold became so intense that I became a human detector because I was able to walk into a room and “taste” it on my tongue if mold was present.

Over the years, my mold radar has desensitized, but one very big life-changing skill remained: my ability to clean the shit out of any situation. Because I was so physically afflicted by mold (but strangely my spouse and toddler were not), I took on the gargantuan task of trying to salvage any items that I could from mold spores that made me so ill. This involved, for example, vacuuming every single item—and I do mean every single item down to pencils and pages of every book—that wasn’t damaged with an industrial grade hepa vacuum. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but a new level of cleaning was unlocked: annihilation mode.

A story about moths

A few weeks ago late at night, I was on the couch minding my own business when I saw a pair of moths fluttering by. I thought it odd, but didn’t think anything of it. Until it happened again a few nights later. I mentioned it to the family and was then reminded of an anecdote by a cousin who mentioned that moths always ate holes in her sweaters and followed her from apartment to apartment.

Oh shit.

It was then that I started googling. If you’ve dealt with clothes moths before, then you know where this is heading. In pursuit of information about this seemingly harmless, yet annoying insect, I learned facts about moths that I never needed to know until now. Like how it’s the larvae, and not the moths that do the actual damage; that adult moths have no mouths and therefore, do not eat; that the eggs can live up to two years in your stuff, laying dormant for the right conditions to hatch.

We have never noticed any holes in our sweaters so I was perplexed about where they were coming from. We bought some sticky moth traps that emit pheromones to lure male moths and put them in our closets and under the couch where we always seemed to see them flitting about. Within an hour, the trap under the couch caught four tiny little beige moths.

The next morning, it occurred to me to lift the edges of the rug under the couch. You may already guess where this is heading next, but first, can I tell you about this rug? I’ve always wanted a large, white, fringed wooly moroccan Beni ourain rug. In the winter of 2021 I finally bit the bullet and purchased one. I was very pleased. My living room was finally the stuff of Pinterest aesthetic dreams!

Nori blended in so well with the rug. Maybe a little too well. Pet hair and dander is the perfect clothes moth feast. RIP rug.

Anyway. Long story short, I saw a cluster of tiny eggs when I pulled up the edges of the rug that was hidden under the couch and a spotted an area underneath the back sofa leg that was threadbare. I vacuumed the underside of the entire rug with my trusty 20 year old hepa vacuum that can still suck like a champion, but determined that it couldn’t be saved. I don’t mind bugs or moths per se, but I do not like wormy things. Alas, the rug had to go.

I now understand what Spring cleaning really means

Images of rugs over a clothes line being beaten with sticks. Woolens washed and stored away in a cedar chest. I get it now. I now understand what Spring cleaning really means. We’re currently in moth season when the weather gets warm enough for the tiny winged insects to emerge from their cocoons and make their presence known. The war against moths is fought with methodical and thorough cleaning and in this war, the vacuum is your weapon of choice¹ and your dryer is your close ally.

As fastidious of a house cleaner as I am, who makes the habit of moving out furniture to vacuum what lurks in the shadows? But years of accumulated dust hiding in the darkness, in corners, in closets, behind and under furniture, and in folds of undisturbed fabrics is enough to make your imagination run wild. It’s a haven for critters that invade your home.²

I vacuumed it all. I tore apart our living room and vacuumed every last dust bunny and laundered anything I could. I discovered the joys of vacuum packing seasonal items (so fun watching it compress!) and put as many clothes inside newly purchased plastic garment bags. We used our car on a string of consecutive hot days as an oven to kill anything that might perpetuate the life cycle of moths on things we could not wash and dry.

Being that this is NYC, our car was parked half a dozen blocks away, so the four of us carried big black trash bags of pillows, coats, and blankets down the streets of Brooklyn, not looking suspicious at all I’m sure, to dump them in the car to bake. Along the way, we curiously saw a handful of rolled up rugs thrown out in the street, making us wonder: does everyone have a moth problem?³

As far as our moth invasion goes, I believe it is mild since we initially caught less than ten in the traps and removed the source early on. For three weeks with meticulous, but time consuming cleaning, not a single moth was seen fluttering in the air or in the traps. I finally was able to breathe.

Until one morning last weekend, I checked the trap in our closet and found a single tiny beige moth stuck on the sticky paper.

Mother f@*%&cker, ahhhhhHH!!! 🫨

Yours truly, in a currently dustless apartment, with maybe a few moth stragglers still loose (fingers crossed),
Jenna

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This week’s drawing

My neurosis this week around the maddening moth situation needed a countermeasure of stress relief. The result is a pen and ink drawing that kept going and going until I ended up with this ridiculous bouquet.

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More reading and links

• Sweater-Eating Moths Are an Unbeatable Enemy (The Atlantic) Apparently, moths are so prevalent and highly adaptable—especially due to climate change and the increasingly warmer weather—that we might have to learn to live with them rather than fight a losing battle. 😕

• Swedish Death Cleaning - I have never heard of this term until I read this essay by

  Louise Tilbrook
  . And then of course, I started seeing the phrase everywhere. I guess you can say that over the last few weeks of moth cleaning I was also inadvertently death cleaning as well. We put out nearly 30% of all our books on the sidewalk (all got taken, by the way. Gotta love the free cycle phenomenon that is Brooklyn!), finally got rid of years of Domino Magazine and Saveur issues that we’ve been holding onto, and donated clothes, so many clothes.

• Only Half of People Stay Employed Through Their 50s. How to Prepare (Barron’s) Well, this is depressing (and timely). 😒

1. When vacuuming up moth eggs, disposing of the vacuum bag or emptying out the contents afterwards is critical. The horror stories I’ve read of vacuums being the perfect breeding grounds for a full-scale infestation is truly the stuff of nightmares.

2. Clothes moths (or carpet months—they are the same species) eat wool, silk, leathers, furs, and feathers. Basically anything that can provide keratin. When pushed, however, they will pretty much eat any soiled and dusty material on any surface. Apparently, they also love the felt on piano hammers. 😳 Yes we do have a piano. No, it isn’t played anymore. Yes, we opened it up and vacuumed the hell out of it.

3. As I was visiting a friend’s apartment, she mentioned that they noticed bare patches in their area rugs. We turned over the edges of the rug and lo and behold, there they were. So yeah…I’m starting to think these moths are everywhere.