How to store winter coats and knits in a small apartment

Every spring people put wool away in a hurry and every autumn some of them find holes. Moth damage is not bad luck and it is not about how clean your apartment is. Clothes moths eat keratin, and what draws them to a particular garment is the food already on it — perspiration, body oil, the residue of a spilled drink. A dirty sweater is bait. A clean one is not.

Everything below follows from that.

Clean everything before it goes away

This is the whole game, and it is the step people skip because a coat worn twice in March looks fine. It is not the visible dirt that matters. Moth larvae are drawn to invisible protein and salt residue, and they will eat through the wool around a stain to get to it. Almost every hole we see in an autumn coat is centered on something that was spilled the previous winter.

Clean wool, cashmere, and outerwear at the end of the season, not the start. Then store it — cleaned, unworn — and it will come out in October the way it went in.

Moths do not eat clean wool nearly as readily as dirty wool. Storage begins at the cleaner, not at the closet.

Get it out of the plastic

The bag your cleaning comes home in is for the walk home. It is not storage. Plastic traps humidity against the fibers, which encourages mildew and can yellow whites and silks over a season, and it does nothing to stop moths — they will happily get in through the open bottom.

Use breathable, unbleached cotton garment bags for anything hanging, and cotton or canvas boxes and zippered fabric cases for anything folded. Cedar chests work. Vacuum bags are a trade-off: they are genuinely moth-proof and they save enormous amounts of space in a New York apartment, but they crush the loft out of down and cashmere and the compression marks can be slow to recover. If space forces your hand, use them for synthetics and heavy coats rather than for fine knits.

Fold knits, hang coats

Sweaters go flat. A hanger puts the entire weight of a cashmere sweater on two points at the shoulders, and over a summer that produces permanent distortion that no amount of steaming corrects. Fold knits with acid-free tissue between the layers if you have it, and stack the heavy ones at the bottom.

Coats and structured jackets hang, on broad wooden or padded hangers that match the width of the shoulder. Wire hangers are the enemy: they leave a point mark on the shoulder line of every coat left on one for more than a few weeks. Do not overcrowd the rail — clothes that are pressed against each other stay creased and cannot breathe.

What actually deters moths

• Cleanliness, first and by a wide margin. Everything else is a supplement.
• Cedar, which repels rather than kills and stops working once the oils fade. Sand cedar blocks lightly with fine sandpaper once a year to bring the scent back rather than replacing them.
• Lavender sachets, same principle, same limitation. Refresh them each season. Neither cedar nor lavender will save a soiled garment.
• Sealed containers, which are the only genuinely reliable barrier. A zipped fabric case inside a lidded box is better than either alone.
• Vacuuming the closet floor and corners before you put anything away. Eggs and larvae live in dust and lint at the back of a closet more often than in the clothes themselves.

Mothballs work and we do not recommend them. The smell is close to impossible to remove from wool, and the active ingredient is unpleasant to live with in a small apartment.

Choosing the spot

Dark, dry, and stable in temperature. Sunlight fades dye and weakens fibers, damp encourages mildew, and repeated temperature swings make fabric expand and contract. In a typical Upper East Side apartment that means an interior closet rather than one on an exterior wall, and above floor level rather than in the bottom of a wardrobe where cold and damp collect. Under the bed is fine in a flat, sealed box if the floor is dry.

Avoid storing anything against a radiator, or in the cupboard that houses one.

Leather, suede, and down

Leather and suede need air more than anything else — a breathable cover on a shaped hanger with space either side, never sealed in plastic, and never compressed. Have them cleaned at the end of the season rather than the start, because leather work takes weeks rather than days and nobody wants to be without a coat in November.

Down should be stored loose enough to keep its loft. A comforter in a cotton storage bag with room to breathe will recover; the same comforter vacuum-packed for six months will take a long time to come back and may never fully.

A short checklist for April

1. Clean everything wool, cashmere, or outerwear — including the pieces that look fine.
2. Take it all out of plastic and put it into cotton.
3. Fold knits, hang coats on broad hangers, leave space on the rail.
4. Add fresh cedar or lavender, and vacuum the closet before it all goes back.
5. Pick a dark, dry, interior spot, and keep it off the floor.

Do that once, in one afternoon, and October takes care of itself. If you would rather not carry six coats up Madison Avenue, call us and we will collect them.