Eww! Gross!

Do you ever have one of those moments when you are totally disgusted with yourself?

I’m having one now. 

I have a very old persian-type carpet in my bedroom. It’s funky and threadbare. I’ve just never bothered to do anything about it. It’s hard to vacuum because it’s thin and the vacuum always tries to eat it. So I’ve been very neglectful, lived with the giant dust elephants created by three cats and a couple of visiting dogs, and just swept it occasionally when my conscience demanded really really loud.

In an old house like mine (92 years old), nothing is airtight or plumb. So bugs and moths in the summer are par for the course, especially in the south. You just live with it.  This summer seemed worse than usual in the moth department, so I finally began to investigate and this is what I found:

Moths! Old-fashioned carpet-eating, wood-devouring, clothing-destroying moths!  Whole sections of rug under a file cabinet are down to the backing threads. The detritus (yuck!) of a summer’s crop of moth leavings littered the area before I vacuumed them up. So this shot actually looks better than what I initially encountered.

It’s like this under every piece of furniture that’s not either flat on the rug or high enough for light and air to circulate.

So, we’re in for a summer-clean. Even though it’s hot, muggy, and miserable, we’ll be opening all the windows, tearing up this particular rug, taking down curtains to wash, vacuuming the living sh*t out of anything that holds still, and examining all the wool and natural fiber items (which abound — just my yarn stash alone could be a challenge) for damage.

The killer is, I really knew it sooner. I just didn’t want to cope. So now I have  twice as much to cope with. And it’s all my own fault.

Eww! Gross!

Wish me luck!