Pantry Devastation

I've been meaning to undertake a significant pantry/kitchen storage system overhaul.  I never quite loved how things were organized when we first moved into the house, but I just never came up with a better way.  Eventually, even the loose sense of order gave way to chaos.

I am currently in the midst of a major overhaul, but only because my hand was forced.  I live in an old house and it's not uncommon to see a creepy crawly now and again.  I seem to have lots of spiders and thanks to the hole Wonderpup scratched in the sliding glass door screen, flying critters will occasionally come in for a visit.

Just a day or so ago I noticed a handful of larvae of some sort on my kitchen ceiling.  Eh, something flew in, or came in on my veggies.  No big deal.  I climbed on a chair and squished the inchworm-like creatures and thought nothing of it.  I don't get overly girly about such things and I was in the middle of a major kitchen scrubdown anyway.  But they didn't go away, they multiplied.  I noticed a small moth flitting around the kitchen. I snapped out of my denial and this morning, when there were more crawlies on my ceiling than I care to admit, I hit the interwebs.

I very quickly determined that my problem is some sort of pantry moth - a grain moth or an Indian Meal Moth.  Whatever did we do before Google?  My sense of satisfaction over identifying the problem quickly evaporated as I read about how the problem materializes and how much of a pain it can be to resolve.  I was so disturbed by my findings that I left work to come home and address the issue immediately.  I now have pheromone traps set up (the horny little bastards came out of the woodwork for those!) and my kitchen smells of cinnamon and peppermint thanks to the pet safe insecticide.  Soon it will smell of Simple Green.

I am in the midst of completely emptying my pantry.  I'm heartbroken and majorly creeped out.  Currently, I'm taking a break between garbage bag numbers three and four.  Most upsetting is the loss of my King Arthur mixes, Trader Joe's cornbread and other assorted goodies.  However, after reading that these suckers can come from commercial plants, chew through thin cardboard and can leave eggs in that half used box of pasta for up to a year, it's all going.

Hey, at least now my cabinets will be nice and organized - stacked to the brim with airtight plastic containers.  Bed Bath and Beyond is going to LOVE me.

I send this as a warning to my readers.  Maybe I'm the only dumbass that didn't think too much about the box of cornmeal over the stove or the half used bag of pasta.  But just in case ... because, boy, have I learned my lesson.