142: That Time of the Moth
The most remarkable thing about this week’s episode is that somehow both Andrew and I are 75-year-old men with bad backs and bad attitudes. As we kvetch about our garages, whine about our spouses, and generally patter on about puttering, it’s incredible how OLD we are sometimes. On that note, this is one of our best episodes.
Listen to the episode:
All our garage talk got me thinking about garage organizations and, specifically, how to organize your garage on the cheap. Though I live in a home where Everything Must Match and Be Specifically For The Purpose Regardless of Cost, I used to be the kind of person who did would scrap together whatever I could. So here are some of my favorite free organizational structures that you can use to clean up your outdoor shit. These are things you can steal from alleys, or just things you already have lying around.
Milk cartons - great for storing things and stacking on shelves. You can even paint them or color-code them.
Old cardboard boxes - Ok, hear me out. We all love a tight-sealing plastic tote but sometimes, a cardboard box just has to do. However, before using it for garage storage, consider putting your belongings in plastic trash bags or otherwise adding another waterproof, critter-proof layer. We all saw that episode of Friends!
Wooden pallets - Wood pallets are great for garage storage, especially if you’re a renter or can’t install big shelves or hooks. You can lean a pallet up against a wall to create hooks for hanging tools, or as a way to keep stuff off the ground (see the above cautionary tale).
Literally any bucket you’ve ever received. Buckets are great for storing on the ground, obviously, but they’re also a good way to organize tools, cords, etc. Just make sure you label them!
Coffee cans are a classic Old Man Tool for a REASON. They seal up. They last until the end of days (unless they get wet and rust is definitely an issue) and, of course, they look neat. And before you say that coffee doesn’t come in cans anymore, YES IT DOES.
Old garbage cans. If you have old or unused trash bins, waste baskets, etc, those are really good options for keeping garage-like things. Put tools and other odds and ends in there. And if you don’t need them again for waste purposes, consider cutting them into like, half-bins that you can pull out.
Here are a bunch of ideas! Because garage storage doesn’t need to be expensive.
In other news, we learned a LOT about moths this week. Specifically, pantry moths, which are technically (and this was news to me) called the the Indianmeal moth, which is “also spelled Indian meal moth and Indian-meal moth.” I will be calling them pantry moths henceforth.
According to Terro (who really know bugs. Related: If I were them, I would make a tarot card deck but with various kinds of insects and other pests and call it the Terro Deck), these moths:
Pantry moths are small winged insects with grey, brown and tan hues. They most commonly are found indoors, in locations where food packaging is stored such as: kitchens, stores selling food, food processing plants. They are known to cause terrible damage to food, spoiling it as it becomes invaded by pantry moths’ larvae.
GROOOOOOOOOOOOSS. GROSS GROSS.
Our caller who brought these moths to the conversation didn’t find them in the kitchen, though. She found them in her children’s crumb-laden, sticky carseats. Which is EXTRA repulsive. Anyway, I did kind of make an assumption that it was pantry moths because it sounds like they were dining on the leftovers of Goldfishes and PB&Js. They could also have been moths that eat textiles, but that seems unlikely due to the food-related-ness. What do you think?
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