Why You Probably Shouldn’t Store Baby Clothes In Mothballs
Adding mothballs to your bin of stored baby items may give you an added sense of security, yet it may not be the best option for storing your baby things. It may be giving you a false sense of security and in fact your baby clothes may even be better off without it. So whether you're using a self-storage facility or a mobile storage container, here are three reasons why storing baby clothes with mothballs may not be the best plan.
1. It's probably unnecessary
The only kind of moths you need to worry about eating your baby clothes are wool moths. And the two types of wool moths common in the US (the webbing clothes moth and the casemaking clothes moth) are only interested in protein fibers. They don't eat synthetics and they don't usually eat plant fibers, since they prefer animal fibers (although they may eat holes in plant fibers to get to animal fibers). So unless your baby clothes are made out of some type of animal fiber, there's no need to protect them from moths. In fact, even baby clothes that contain wool may not need protecting; if the fabric contains significant amounts of non-wool fiber (as many baby products do), even the small amounts of wool that are found in the item may or may not be worth the bother to moths unless there's already an infestation. It's always good to protect any fabric that contains wool, though, just in case. You can do that by simply keeping these items in a sealed, thick plastic bag with no air holes.
2. It may not work
You can protect your wool baby clothes from moths by physically excluding the moths, but this is basically what you'd have to do to successfully use mothballs as well. So if you don't want to seal the clothes up in plastic, mothballs may not work anyway. That's because adding mothballs to a bin of clothing only works if the vapors inside the bin can get strong enough to kill any moths that show up. If it's not fairly airtight, then the vapors can escape (and moths can get in), making the treatment ineffective.
3. Mothballs have nasty chemicals
Chemicals is probably one of the top reasons to avoid using mothballs near baby clothes. After all, mothballs have strong chemicals that can harm you as well as the moths, and your newborn baby is likely to be even more susceptible to chemicals than you are. Even having to buy all-new baby clothes for each baby is better than using mothballs and having them harm the baby in any way. So if you do plan to keep baby clothes with wool content for the next child (or save them for your grandchildren), try less toxic options first.
Contact a storage facility, like Westview Public Mini-Storage , for more help.
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