Cleaning out the pantry to get rid of the moths

Yesterday afternoon I started to clean out the pantry which has a lot of pantry moth eggs, larvae and worms - basically a pantry moth infestation. It's ridiculous that this has been an issue and only because no-one else in the house does anything about it. Everyone else seems to leave the pantry door wide open to allow more of those moths to come inside. For a while there, every time you opened the pantry door, a few of those pantry moths would flutter out.

I cleaned out the pantry about two months ago and got rid of a whole heap of those pantry moths and also a great many packets of food which had been infected with the eggs of the moths, which were spoilt and no longer viable. It upset me that I had to throw out so much of my food - pasta, grains, nuts, seeds, rice - because of these moths and their eggs.

My mother got upset last time I cleared out, cleaned and re-organised the pantry because she "couldn't find anything". That is because I re-organised everything so that all like items were grouped together - all the pasta was together, all the rice together, all nuts together, all legumes together, all jams together, all pasta sauces together and so on. It was too organised for her.  She likes to dump things wherever there is a space, rather than to make sure everything is in the right place. I am really good at organising things so that the most amount of items fit into the smallest space possible, but in an organised, easy-to-find way. I even pack more things in my suitcases than other people I know because I know how to fill every space well.

The reason that I organise things that way is not because I am a neat freak, but rather because it just makes it easier to find the food you want when all the same types of things are placed together in the same area, so you don't have to search too much or too hard to find what you are looking for. Just common sense really.

Earlier in the day I found some empty glass jars with airtight lids, washed them and let them dry. Once they were dry, I used them to add my pasta, nuts, legumes, breakfast cereals and seeds which were still okay and uninfected with the moth eggs. I labelled everything and organised them in the pantry. First I cleaned all the sides and bench space in the pantry, found quite a few moth larvae in between cereals and on the walls that I had to get rid of. It was quite a job to do, but I felt quite accomplished and happy with my work when I finished it.

When I showed my mother how I organised the food in the pantry and where everything was, so that it I made it easy to find what you were looking for, she didn't complain about it.  I think maybe because I had to throw away a great deal of her food that had been infected with the moth eggs (like a 5kg bag of rice among other dry foods), she was a bit more subdued and realised that what I was doing was a good thing for ensuring the food is kept moth-free.

I still have a number of packets of my nuts in the fridge, where they are okay to stay, but I have to get some more glass jars tomorrow to store them in there.