Oh look, it's Dietrich

Last year, some of you may recall, I had grain moths in my house. These creatures disgusted me no end, and I was filled with the fiery hatred of a thousand light bulbs for these pestilent little buggers.

Many of you gave me excellent advice, and I have had what looks like 100% success in stopping the infestation from recurring this year, in the hot weather. I know some of you have also suffered from this problem, so I thought I'd let you know what I did - and how I did it without using any poison or toxic stuff at all.

1. Clean out the pantry. If you open a bag or box of rice, pasta, cereal, flour, or whatever and see a single moth, throw it away. If you see any little pin holes in a plastic bag that's holding bulk goods, throw it away. Basically, anything that's already infested or shows the slightest sign of it: get rid of it.

Next, empty out and scrub down the places you keep food. I used baking soda and water.

2. Change your storage habits. Get plastic or metal containers with airtight lids for keeping any dry starchy goods outside of the refrigerator: pasta, rice, flour, oatmeal, cereal, bread crumbs, grains, legumes, and so on. Some people who commented on my original post have had problems with sugar, nuts, tea, cocoa and dried fruit, and other more sweet items, but I had no such problems - these particular guys were interested in grains and grains only, especially rice and whole flours. I also have had success keeping pasta in its bag, inside another strong Ziploc freezer bag.

3. Kill any you bring home. You may not want to think about it, but when you buy in bulk from the bins in the store, there are sometimes going to be critters or eggs hiding in the food. When you bring home your grains, put them in the freezer or cold refrigerator overnight. The bugs can't survive the cold. Then put them in your containers for storage.

4. Consolidate. If you can have all of your not-in-the-fridge food stored in one area of your kitchen, do so - it will limit the blast radius of any infestation.

5. Discourage from the area. Cedar blocks thrown in dresser drawers help to keep moths away from your clothes; they do the same thing in food storage drawers, and don't affect the flavor of things at all. You can buy cedar blocks, drawer liners, or balls in many places, usually in the clothing storage area rather than food storage areas. Throw a couple in your cabinets and drawers and replenish them every 6 months or so with cedar spray.

6. Pheromone traps. When the warmer weather came around again, you can bet that whatever moths were left from last year woke up or hatched or whatever those wretched bastards do, and I would see them in the house, one and two at a time. Whole Foods and health food stores carry pheromone traps for pantry pests, and they are brilliant. Basically, they're a triangle of light cardboard with sticky stuff on the inside surfaces, and a lure. The lure attracts the males, and they stick to the sticky stuff and die die die. I have mine on top of my fridge, which is a good height for them to fly into it; it currently has about 20 dead moths in it, most of which I never saw before they bit it. You may wind up with some females left over, but they can't make more little assholes without the menfolk.

7. Integrated pest management. It's important that you do all of these things together to destroy or prevent an infestation, or it won't work.

Thanks, everyone, for your fantastic advice.

Hi, everyone,

Post-honeymoon and post wonderful gifting, imlad and I are doing a house purge. There will be a couple posts to follow about things we'd like to be rid of, and we wanted to give y'all first crack. If it's not gone in a week or so, it goes to Goodwill or trash!

Here's what we got so far:

Oscar de la Renta five-piece luggage set, green tweed. Old, but useable. The largest suitcase is not all that large, and has old-fashioned rollers rather than the on-edge rolling that most suitcases do today.

Queen size Aerobed with boxspring. This thing is huge and extremely comfortable, and has an auto-inflater. It does have a slow leak somewhere, which a more motivated person could find and patch.

Iron, with a crack in the handle, but totally fine and useable.

Small laptop from Digital, circa 1992. Yes, you heard me right. With adapter and case.

Several bottles of LA Looks alcohol-free super hold gel.

Some froofy lotions and things from Bath and Body Works.

Three small propane tanks for a small propane grill.

There is stuff for me to give away, either to individuals or to Goodwill, before Sept. 1.

This includes:

Some clothing, mainly skirts and some other stuff, large sizes, 12-14.
A desk, entertainment center, and bookcase, all fakey Sears wood.
A couple of heavy wooden beat-up chairs.
A video tape cabinet.
A few other bits of crap.

Any takers, please, write, call 857 991 7291, or stop by Menage, 45 Walker St. #2 in Somerville, by Tuesday, Aug. 31!

Hey, folks,

So, as should be obvious by now, I would appear to be moving. I'm going to severely consolidate my stuff, so I shouldn't have that much - especially furniture. It's going to be a strange move, likely involving a drive to Newton to pick up some old stuff, some of which will move to the new place, some of which will go...elsewhere, we're not sure as yet. But it shouldn't be *too* difficult overall.

What I'm trying to say is: help?

It'll happen August 29, a Sunday, and shouldn't take more than a few hours. Afterwards, you will be plied with things with which one plies people. (Um.)

Also, I'll be getting rid of some stuff: an old desk that nonetheless is still serviceable, a couple of dilapidated bookshelfy things, some dishes and silverware, and perhaps some clothing. So I'd encourage folks to claim stuff as well - otherwise a thoroughly annoying yard sale will be in order.

Thankye in advance for yeer support.