· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Closets
A cedar closet has been the traditional answer to clothes moths for a century, and a lot of Nashville houses from the 1940s through the 1970s have one, or a cedar chest in the attic. The idea is sound as far as it goes: the oil in aromatic red cedar repels adult moths and can kill young larvae at high concentration. The trouble is that the concentration in a lined closet drops within a few years, the larvae that do the eating are already in the wool by the time the moth is repelled, and the pest doing the damage is often not a moth at all. Cedar is part of an answer. The rest is habits.
Who is eating the sweater
Clothes moths are small, tan and avoid light; you rarely see them, and the pantry moths you do see flying around the kitchen are a different insect that does not eat fabric. The damage is done by the larvae, which eat keratin in wool, silk, fur, feathers and cashmere, especially where the fabric holds sweat, food or body oil. They leave irregular holes, silky webbing or small cases in the folds.
Carpet beetles cause the same holes and are more common in Middle Tennessee homes. The adults live outdoors on pollen and come in through windows in spring; the larvae are small, bristly and brown, and they eat the same fibers plus lint, pet hair and dead insects along the baseboards. If you find holes but no webbing, carpet beetles are the likelier culprit, and they are unbothered by cedar.
What cedar does and does not do
Fresh aromatic cedar, with its oil intact, repels adult moths from laying eggs nearby and can kill small larvae in a sealed space. That effect fades as the surface oxidizes; a cedar closet more than a few years old has lost most of it, and sanding the surface lightly brings some back. Cedar does nothing to eggs or larvae already in a garment, and in a closet that is opened daily and not airtight, the concentration never gets high enough to matter much.
What a cedar closet does reliably is smell nice and, if it is well built and tight, keep the humidity a little steadier. Treat it as a well-sealed closet with a pleasant lining, and protect the clothes inside it the same way you would anywhere else.
What actually protects wool
Clean before storing. Larvae go for soiled fibers first, and a sweater put away with a season of wear on it is the one that gets eaten. Dry cleaning or a proper wash kills any eggs already present. Then seal: garment bags that close fully, or bins with tight lids, keep adults from reaching the fabric. Cotton bags breathe but do not exclude larvae; zippered bags of a heavy fabric or plastic do.
Check stored items every couple of months, and shake out or brush anything you find. Freezing a garment for a few days kills all stages and is the practical treatment for a single infested piece. Vacuum the closet floor and corners, where lint and hair feed carpet beetle larvae, and keep the wool off the floor.
- Clean everything before it goes into storage
- Sealed garment bags or lidded bins, not open shelves
- Vacuum the closet floor and baseboards regularly
- Freeze any garment showing damage before it goes back
- Pheromone traps to monitor, not to control
Building a closet that helps
If you are lining a closet in cedar, line it fully, seal the door with weatherstripping, and skip the finish; a varnished cedar board has no scent. Plan to sand it every few years. More useful than the lining are the things that make the closet easy to keep clean: a solid floor rather than carpet, few gaps for lint to gather, good lighting, and shelving high enough to vacuum under.
Humidity matters too. Wool stored damp mildews, and larvae thrive in the same conditions. A closet on an exterior wall in a Nashville house runs humid in summer, and a small dehumidifier or desiccant packs in the bins keep the stored clothes dry. Mothballs work but the fumes are toxic and they linger in fabric; if used at all, they belong in a sealed container, not in a closet you open every day.