Originally Posted by
Peckish
Well, the two things I've heard of are putting things in the freezer for a day or two, and putting things in the dryer on high heat. If it were me, I'd do the dryer, then wash on an extended load with water as hot as I dared, then dryer again.
On the other hand, if I wasn't very attached to the fabric, I'd toss it.
Sorry, I have to take issue with the idea of putting anything that isn't clean into the dryer. We don't know what it might take to kill these critters or their eggs. I'd go with washing them first. Also, I'd probably wash all the fabric stored anywhere near the one that's found to have "wildlife". There's no way to know how they got there or how mobile they might be. Probably, the whole area needs to be cleared of fabric and then fumigated before clean fabric is put back in there.
The freezer would make a lot of cold blooded animals go dormant, but in many cases would not kill them.
Maybe a good first step would be to try to get a picture of the mites and visit a site that has experts who might be able to identify exactly what they are. Here's one that is very active:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 If they can tell you what it is exactly, they can probably give more information about the best way to get rid of it.
Good luck!