Pantry Moths - Davis,CA

.

Ugh, we dealt with those for a couple of years. They lay eggs in the darndest places. Like in the cap of unopened mustard. Really? They got into things that were sealed as well. Finally we moved and fearing taking the problem with us we just threw out everything and started fresh.
My advice is just throw out everything, clean the pantry shelves and start over.

Throw everything out wipe shelves (top/bottom/sides) down with bleach. Put down a layer of bay leaves. Buy only pantry food that you will use for next few days....keep that stuff out of cabinet for a few days. Continue to buy only what you will use for during the week for the next 1-2 weeks until you don't see the pantry moths anymore.

Good luck.

I hate them!

Sadly they come in our food (gross, I know) and if you have them, I bet your neighbor does, too.

What we did:

Got a pest control guy to put pheromone traps up in the kitchen.
Discarded anything they might eat that was in a non-sealed container.
Put everything else in sealed glass or tupperware.
Did not leave out cereal (no snack cups waiting for little hands after snack time) or bread or pet food. Nothing they might eat. We even sealed up PowerBars.
The bigger kids attacked them with an electronic flyswatter.

We lost a lot of dry goods at first but it was WORTH IT to get rid of them and it sounds like you have a big infestation somewhere.

Eggs can be hatching out for a long time.
You need to get all things contained in card board into zip lock bags or plastic food storage containers with lids.
Why?
The larva eat right through cardboard to get in or get out of a box.
If something came in contaminated, it will be confined and you can minimize the damage.
With everything else in containers, they'll be kept from being contaminated.
Plastic/glass bottles and cans are fine as is.
Moth traps catch the moths to help minimize the eggs they lay.
It can take awhile, but you'll be moth/larva free eventually.

Oh, so sorry! We had to battle those things, too. They were in a bad of dog food and got into our pantry.
You do have to throw out everything that is suspect and thoroughly clean. I don't like to use pesticides, so I got the strips you can hang up in the pantry. I was also very diligent in killing every one of them I saw. It took about a year to get rid of all of them.
They can chew through just about anything, so you have to keep checking any new thing you buy. I started keeping lots of stuff in the fridge so they couldn't get to it.

We have these stupid things also. They are a royal pain. Ugh, nasty buggers. Anyway, I have pantry moth traps around the house to attract the flyers. For others, they will hide everywhere even if no food is in the container. You need to remove everything and check it all, then wipe down the shelves. Just using a regular Lysol type cleaner should do it since you really just need to make sure no nests hidden away somewhere. We have even had them in our closets even though they do not eat the clothes.

The pantry moth traps can be bought from Amazon or as I got mine from Menards for a little cheaper. They are like glue traps that you put a little square thing in and then put it where they would fly around.