When Moths Attack! (What's a Wool Lover to Do?)

They've eaten EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING!

A few months ago while my daughter and I were both in the deepest depths of constant illness, my husband attended a funeral, one of the very rare occasions on which he has need to dig his gray suit out of our bedroom closet. Except when he put on said suit, it was a little more... ventilated than we remembered. He had to wear it anyway, but when we dug deeper...

They'd eaten EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Every one of my husband's suits and all three of my suits, my lovely, well-fitting soft wool skirt suits. All of my wool skirts—my favorite long plaid skirt, my high-waisted wool pencil skirt, my houndstooth A-line wool skirt, my pink wool skirt... EVERYTHING.

Well, everything in that closet. (Luckily my me-made wool skirts, my wool sweaters, my wool socks, wool fabric and wool yarn are stored in drawers elsewhere.)

Readers, you know how I feel about wool. It is my main fiber from September to March, and sometimes in-between. Also: I don't have a budget to replace any of that stuff now, so will have to very slowly rebuild my wool wardrobe through thrifting and sewing. (Though we will just have to suck it up and get my husband a suit, as we have been invited to a few events this summer that require it).

Now, the intelligent thing to do once this moth tragedy struck would have been to immediately clean out the closet, throw out all the holey stuff, wash the non-woolens in hot water, vacuum and wipe down the walls and floor... and protect all the other woolens in the house.

But I was really ill (still am, but getting SO much better!) and my daughter was ill and my husband was already doing all of the housework and much of the childcare... so I just SHUT THE DOOR and tried not to think about it until I had time to really attack it. It became the closet DMZ. Since then, I have just tried to make do with clothes from my dresser drawers, but I am much more rumpled than usual as a result.

Anyway... last night we heard some fluttering and other scary noises coming from the closet, like some moths had just hatched and were TRYING TO GET OUT. So I jumped up in terror and ran to protect my newly hand-knit sweater, bagging it up in a giant Ziploc and putting it in a drawer with some cedar balls.

So... yeah. Er. Once I'm feeling better physically, I think I had better tackle that closet before I actually try and sew anything. Especially anything wool.

Any tips and advice or experiences on de-moth-ifying are very welcome. Have you ever had to deal with these hungry little terrors?