Most knitwear damage happens in storage rather than in wear. Six months in the wrong conditions does more than a winter of use.

Five rules cover it.

1. Fold, never hang

A knit has no structure of its own. Hung on a hanger for six months, the weight of the garment pulls the shoulders into points and stretches the body. This is permanent.

Fold everything knitted. If you are short of drawer space, folded on a shelf is still better than hung.

For anything heavy, fold the arms in and then fold in half, so the weight is distributed rather than concentrated on one crease.

2. Store it clean, always

The most important rule and the most ignored.

Moths are not attracted to clean wool. They are attracted to what we leave on it — skin, hair, sweat, food, perfume. A jumper worn twice and put away looks clean and is, to a moth, marked.

Wash or air everything before it goes away, without exception. How to wash cashmere covers the delicate end.

3. Dark, dry and cool

  • Dark, because light fades colour over months, especially on the fold lines
  • Dry, because damp brings mildew, which marks permanently and smells
  • Cool, because heat accelerates everything

A drawer or a shelf in a bedroom is fine. A loft, a garage, a shed and a cellar all fail on at least two counts — temperature swings, damp, or both.

4. Breathable, not airtight

The instinct to seal knitwear in plastic is understandable and wrong. Plastic traps moisture, and trapped moisture is mildew.

Use cotton bags, pillowcases, or an open box. If you must use a vacuum bag for space reasons, make sure the garment is bone dry first, and accept that it will need airing and reshaping afterwards.

5. Deter moths properly

Cedar and lavender both work, with a caveat: they repel rather than kill, and both lose their effect as the scent fades. Cedar needs sanding lightly once a year to reopen the surface; lavender needs replacing.

Neither will save a garment that already has eggs in it, which is the real argument for rule 2.

If you find damage, put the garment in a sealed bag in the freezer for a few days. That kills every life stage, and it is the one reliable treatment that costs nothing.

Getting it out again

Take everything out a week before you need it. Fold creases drop out with a day on a flat surface, and anything with a musty note wants air rather than washing.

This is also the moment to deal with pilling from last season, while you can see the whole garment — how to remove bobbles covers the methods.

Worth doing once

Storage is where the difference between a jumper that lasts three years and one that lasts fifteen actually shows. It costs an afternoon a year, and it protects things that are expensive to replace — what makes a knit good quality covers why the good ones are worth protecting.