How to Get Rid of Pests in Your Closets

It seems like a magic trick gone wrong: you open your closet doors one morning and whoosh! Out flies a moth. That’s profoundly disturbing enough, but moths aren’t the only insects you’ve found in your closet. How do you make these pests go away?

Follow these tips to get rid of pests in your custom closets:

• Clean your closets inside and out, vacuuming the carpets and going through drawers and shelves
• Don’t put clothes in the closet unless they’re clean
• Give bugs fewer places to hide by organizing your closets
• Reduce moisture in your closets
• Try a natural bug deterrent like cedar or lavender

In this article, you’ll learn what kinds of bugs are lured into closets and why. There will also be plenty more actionable tips for removing pests in your closets, so make sure you keep reading!

Once you get over the shock of having found living bugs in your closet, a few questions will immediately spring to mind. Where did those insects come from? How do you get rid of them?

The latter question will be addressed in the next section, but for now, here’s what pests like so much about your closets.

Are you of the mindset that jeans don’t have to be washed every time you wear them? Perhaps you think that if you only wore a piece of clothing for a few hours that it’s not really dirty, especially if you layered it, like a blazer over a t-shirt or a hoodie with a shirt underneath.



Sure, it’s convenient to not have to wash your clothes all the time, but even if your outfits don’t seem dirty to you, bugs would beg to differ.

Remember that to an insect, your clothing is about 1,000 times bigger at least. Thus, that little fleck of dead skin you sloughed off without realizing it is far more than a fleck to an insect. That smudge of dirt is also a feast for them.

Termites are known for eating wood, but they don’t turn down easy sources of dirt like unclean clothes either. Cockroaches will do the same, as will carpet beetles. The name may imply that carpet beetles only want to munch on your rugs, but they also eat baseboards and the debris that sheds from them. 

Hiding in your carpet edges and the corners of your closets, carpet beetles may be bottom feeders, but you’re giving them an endless supply of food with your dirty clothes.

You know better than to stash some candy bars in the back drawer of your closet, but food can unwittingly make its way into your closets in other ways. Again, by not washing stained and dirty clothes after wearing them but instead putting them back in the closet, lots of pests will descend on your garments. That can also be true if you tried removing a stubborn food stain but it didn’t come all the way out.

If you see firebrats, silverfish, crickets, termites, and/or cockroaches, it’s likely due to a cleanliness problem within your closets.

Should you have pests in only your bedroom closets and not your hall closets, then the insects here are likely in it for the clothes. Clothes-eating moths, like those you saw in your closet the other day, can make holes through your favorite sweaters and pants if you leave them unchecked.

They’re not the only ones! Here are some other bugs to beware of courtesy of The Spruce:

• Webbing Clothes Moths: The webbing clothes moth or “Tineola bisselliella” is a teeny-tiny moth about the size of a grain of rice and roughly the same color. The larvae will hungrily munch on all sorts of clothing materials, including mohair, cashmere, and wool.
• Termites: Termites like dirt more than they do eating clothes, but they will chew through your best outfits to reach the food and dirt sources.
• Silverfish: Its name doesn’t sound like it, but silverfish are bugs, not fish. Centipede-like, silverfish are indeed silver in color. Their favorite clothing materials are rayon, cotton, and silk.
• Firebrats: Firebrats are related to silverfish, but with a brownish hue. They like starchy clothes like silverfish do as well as rayon, linen, and cotton.
• Crickets: Crickets don’t intentionally eat clothes and linens, but rather, they go to town on a stain and tend to leave holes and tears in their wake.
• Cockroaches: Very undiscerning about their food sources, if your clothes are stained with food, bodily fluids, or dirt, cockroaches will eat and eat.
• Case-Bearing Clothes Moths: The case-bearing clothes moth is a very small bug, about half an inch maybe, that enjoys hair, wool, flannel, and fur.
• Carpet Beetles: Up to three species of carpet beetles will ingest your wardrobe as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They include the black carpet beetle, variegated carpet beetle, and the common carpet beetle.

How warm and damp is it in your closets? Silverfish prefer temperatures of at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and firebrats up to 90 degrees, says The Spruce. Termites quite like moisture, as do crickets.

Hopefully, you have at least one light source in each of your closets. If not, then the chances of the spaces drawing in pests increases. Carpet beetles choose dark locations even though they prefer living among fabric; imagine if they found a place with both, such as your closet! Webbing clothes moths and silverfish are also likely to propagate in places with dim or no light.

Knowing what you do now about which closet settings and habits are most likely to invite pests, you can begin tackling your insect problem one tip at a time!

The act of folding your clothes or sliding them onto a hanger can rustle the dirt, skin flakes, and loose food debris that remains on your dirty clothing. This debris then falls to the floor where bottom-feeding bugs finally get a chance to strike.

You can’t only worry about keeping your clothes clean then, but the rest of your closet as well. If you have carpets, vacuum them, even those tight little corners that are hard to get to. Try a portable vacuum or use the suction hose on your regular vacuum for those tough spots. This will drive out carpet beetles.

Go through every shelf and drawer in your closet, remove what’s in there, and dust off the closet fixtures. If any of your drawers are lined with fabric, vacuum or wash those fabrics, as pests can certainly fit inside your drawers.



Cleaning your closets this thoroughly cannot be a one-and-done occurrence. About every month, maybe even more often, you need to go through and tidy up your closets again. It’s one of your best defenses against pests!

The information provided thus far in this article should have shown you the value of always washing your clothes after you wear them. Yes, that’s even if you only wore the clothes for a couple of hours. If you sweat even a little, or if you spill even a drop of juice and then your clothes go back in the closet, it’s game over. Bugs will be able to easily find the clothes and begin feasting.

Depending on how long this goes on, you might pull out your favorite sweater only to discover it has a huge hole right in the center. Start washing your clothes more often and this won’t happen.  If you’re worried about maintaining the integrity of your clothes when you wash them frequently, turn them inside out, use garment bags, or wash them on a gentle cycle.

To you, your closets are a little messy. To critters and pests, it’s a literal jungle for them to traverse, and they will be happy to do so. The cleaner and more organized your closets are, the less incentive bugs have to make their home in there.

If pests ever do decide to invade your space again, you’ll also spot the bugs the moment they fly or scurry across your closets. It’s then easier to locate them and use some more humane bug removal methods that will be discussed shortly.

You don’t want your closet to be a moist place for the sake of everything in there. Moisture can cause the wood to contract and expand depending on how humid your closet is. Even worse is that when the relative humidity is more than 90 percent, wood can “rot”, says moisture meter experts Wagner Meters. Before it gets that bad, the wood can be a hotbed for mold and mildew.

It’s not a better story for the expensive shoes and clothing in your closets. They too can get moldy. It’s one thing for wood to be riddled with mold, but your clothes? You’ll probably have to throw the garments away.

Silica and other desiccants can absorb the extra moisture so your closets are drier.

You can also be proactive in pest removal, but in a humane way. Cedar chips are one such option; cedar blocks work just as well. Put the cedar in your closet, ideally away from clothing or any other items in your closet that are stainable. The oils that release from cedar over time can wreck your wardrobe if you’re not careful!

Cedar is beneficial for your closets in several ways. It may be able to ward off the development of mold and mildew, sparing the contents of your closet. On top of that, cedar also deodorizes your closets so they always smell fresh.

Dried lavender will keep away flies, beetles, fleas, and moths, so for that, it’s worth using. Whether you pluck some lavender from your garden, use a store-bought lavender spray (just make sure there’s actual lavender in it), add some lavender essential oils to your closet, or hide a few sachets of lavender, all will keep bugs out.

Pests in your closets are not only unappealing, but these bugs are destructive too. They can eat your clothes and spread quickly. Now that you know how to treat your pest problem, you can finally enjoy using your closets again!

• https://www.thespruce.com/insects-that-eat-holes-in-clothes-2146424
• https://www.wagnermeters.com/moisture-meters/wood-info/temperature-impact-wood-moisture-content/