Storing Stuff at Home: Finding the Right Environment Part 4.5 - Dry

I once worked in an archives that suffered from a freak flood, which damaged countless papers which had to be dried piece by piece. I also had a hot water pipe burst at a 90° angle – right on to shelves of museum artifacts. I’ve helped dry out a flooded historical society and once completed an assessment for a collections storage area that had a completely caved in roof.

Dealing with water is a never-ending job.

Needless to say, I will be sure to write about water damage in a future post.

But when it comes to creating the ideal storage environment in your home, steering clear of rusty pipes and flood zones isn’t the only thing we have to worry about. Let’s talk about humidity.

Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a place famous for its “dry heat”, you’re probably well acquainted with how humidity can make you feel. Well get this: your stuff your stuff feels it too. Many of our heirlooms are made of organic materials, meaning they’re carbon-based. Fabrics, leather, fabric, and clay are all organic. Thus, just as you can feel the difference between 50% and 80% relative humidity (RH), so can they. Organic material expands and contracts as it absorbs moisture, which can speed up its deterioration over time. Metal can rust. Paper can expand.

Museums track their relative humidity (RH) by using a hygrometer. At many museums, collections staff often spends the warmer months emptying dehumidifiers once or twice a day. Then, during the colder months (I’m looking at you, February) the humidity often falls too low, requiring the addition of a humidifier. It may seem like a hassle, but to museum collections pros, it’s an important part of the job.  

As a goal, museums try to maintain year-round RH percentages at 50%, though for many institutions this is often not possible. But it’s always good to dream, right? As for my career, I have had the opportunity to work in organizations with ideal temperature and relative humidity figures, but to be honest, over the course of 20+ years, those opportunities have been few and far between. Let’s just say I have emptied many dehumidifiers in my day.

Hopefully, by creating a Dark and Cool storage environment, you will, by default, also create a relatively Dry one too. So, before you run out and buy a hygrometer, I recommend that you simply start paying attention to how you feel in your home. Is it dry in the winter? Is it uncomfortable in the summer? If so, adding a humidifier and/or a dehumidifier may be the answer you need to make your home more comfortable for both you and your stuff. Then, you can set the machine/s to turn on or off when the air feels best for you.

Come back soon for the final post in our DC⚡DC series: Constant. Check out the other posts here:

(Note: I should mention that there is a difference between the terms “humidity” and “relative humidity”. For more information about that, check out this article.)

Storing Stuff at Home: Finding the Right Environment Part 4 - Dry

Welcome to part four of our Storing Clothes at Home: DC⚡DC series. To recap, so far we’ve covered some very basic information that will help you create the best possible storage environment in your home. First and foremost, your vintage, antique, and/or treasured items should be stored somewhere Dark, Cool, Secure, Dry, and Constant. You know, DC⚡DC, like that popular band.

Okay, so not really like “that band”, but I find it helpful to create a mnemonic device to help remember things.

Anyhow, today’s environmental topic, Dry, probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone. After all, I’m sure that you are plenty smart enough to figure out that you want to keep your precious belongings away from, well, water. If your ideal storage spot is in a basement, note where the water pipes are and make sure they’re in good condition.

My daughter left her journal out in the rain. Yikes.

My daughter left her journal out in the rain. Yikes.

Make sure to keep items off the floor in case water seeps up through the floor cracks or down through a window well (both of which has happened to me.) If your only option is a garage, make sure your items are as far away from the door as possible, just in case a storm blows in. It’s always a good idea to keep your items covered in plastic or tyvek as an easy extra insurance policy. And remember, when water is concerned, it’s best to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Depressed yet? Don’t be. We’ll figure this out together.

I will continue our discussion on all things wet and water in a future post. After all, we haven’t even talked about humidity yet.

Until then, I hope this post has helped you feel more confident about how to best care for your family possessions and antiques. Sometimes the answers are pretty obvious but it helps to have some things spelled out as a reminder. I hope I was able to accomplish that here.

Storing Stuff at Home: Finding the Right Environment Part 3 - Cool

It’s been a while but we’re back with the next installment of our Storing Stuff at Home series. If you missed the first two posts, be sure to check them out here and here. It’s been hot, hot, hot! here in Iowa so it’s the perfect time to “think cool”. And here’s the thing: stuff likes to be cool. Clothing, paper, photographs, even plastic prefers to be stored away from the heat. Some items such as photo negatives prefer to be cooler than others. In fact, a well-funded photo archives will store their collections in special, frost-free freezers. For a mixed-media collection, meaning items made from different kinds of materials, the ideal is to keep the space around 65°F. That temperature will help to slow down natural deterioration without causing too much hassle. But that temperature can still be a little hard to achieve for most home-owners.

And one more thing about that ideal temperature: I used to work in an office/reading room that was kept at a consistent 65°F and wow I froze every single day. I would even sneak coffee to my desk just to keep my fingers from literally being too cold to type. So while the collection was content, I most definitely was not. Yikes!

So, assuming you don’t want to wear long underwear all summer long, a 65°F home may be a bit extreme. If you have items that really need special care, contact us and we can brainstorm solutions for you such as finding an appropriate climate-controlled storage site or other specialty options.

But for the rest of us, remember that when we’re thinking about storing heirloom garments and other treasures at home, everything is relative. With the goal of “staying cool”, take a mental tour around your home and think of where a good place might be to store your valuables. The spot should not only check all the boxes on our DC⚡DC list (Dark, Cool, Secure, Dry, Constant) but should also be convenient for you. For me, our guest room closet is the perfect space for my wedding dress. For ephemera and archival items, my basement is ideal. The guest room closet has all interior walls and isn’t used much. Our basement checks all the DC⚡DC boxes and there’s plenty of space to store my childhood choir programs, my kids’ artwork, and my great uncle’s personal papers.

But check this out: if you normally keep your home at a balmy 75°F, remember that you are not running a museum and you do not need to alter your life, your thermostat, or your power bills, just to keep your garments cool. As we’ll learn in a future post, a constant temperature, even a high one, can actually be more important than a cool one. But if you are able to relocate your garments and other treasures to a cooler part of the house, do it today! Your stuff will thank you for it.

So there you have it. We’ve now launched the Secure, Dark, and Cool parts of our DC⚡DC series. Stay tuned for the next installment and be sure to contact us with any questions you may have about storing heirlooms at home.

And come back soon for Part 4 - Dry. (And trust me, the blog post will be anything but dry. We’re having lots of fun over here, right?) #AC/DC

Storing Stuff at Home: Finding the Right Environment Part 2 - Dark

Welcome to part two of our Storing Stuff at Home series. Find part one here.

Let’s recap.

Have you ever wondered:

How should I store clothes at home?

How should I store my off-season clothes?

How can I preserve heirloom garments in my house?

Well I have some answers for you!

So let’s jump right in and get back to the Highway to Hell. I mean AC ⚡DC. I mean DC ⚡DC.

Wait, never mind. This is getting a little weird. Let’s take a step back and review my five standards for a basic storage environment.

An adequate space should be:

Dark

Cool

Dry

Constant

Secure

You know, DC⚡DC.

So what do I mean by dark?

Light can damage stuff. You probably know that already. Sunlight, lightbulbs, you name it, it can cause damage. Sometimes light damage happens quickly; leave a piece of paper out in the summer sun for a while and the ink will start to fade pretty quickly. But sometimes it happens over time, slow enough that you might not even notice that anything has happened. Have you ever taken a photograph out of a frame and noticed that the colors along the edges of the photo – which were hidden by the frame – are much more vibrant? Perhaps you didn’t even realize that the photo had changed so much; it still looked the same to you.

Believe it or not, the same thing can happen to clothing. But light can do more damage that just ruin your aesthetic. UV rays can even break down the fibers in a textile, making it weak and brittle.

In the museum world, curators and exhibit developers go to great lengths to make sure the artifacts they put on display are kept under low light. In addition, if an exhibit will be up for a long time, museum staff may rotate multiple artifacts in and out of the space in order to make sure that a single item isn’t on display for too long. For example, if a permanent exhibit has a quilt display, every few months one quilt will be removed from the exhibit and another will be added.

Now I realize that you (probably) aren’t running a museum out of your home (probably). So how is this relevant to you?

Here are a few quick solutions to minimize- light exposure:

• If your closet has a window, make sure your long-hanging garments are covered with a garment bag or dust cover.

• When you leave the room, turn off the light. Easy peasy but it can really make a difference.

• If you’re displaying favorite textiles in a frame, on a quilt rack, or over the back of your couch, switch them out with something else every few months to give them a much-needed break.

So that was easy! Come back soon as we discuss more DC⚡DC environmental standards and how you can easily incorporate them into your home storage plans.

Storing Stuff at Home: Finding the Right Environment Part 1 - Secure

Have you ever wondered:

How should I store clothes at home?

How should I store my off-season clothes?

How can I preserve heirloom garments in my house?

Hangerbee has the answers for you!

Welcome to part one of “Storing Stuff at Home”. If you’re familiar with me, you probably know that I come from the “museum world” and have two decades of experience with artifact and archives preservation. I have worked with well-funded collections, with beautiful climate-controlled and secure storage environments and all the acid-free and lignin-free storage materials I could possibly need…

…I have also worked in sub-par, under-funded facilities, with inadequate IPM (integrated pest management) and minimal storage supplies. Yikes!

Honestly though, I really appreciate having had the opportunity to experience both ends of the spectrum first-hand. These experiences have not only shaped my expectations of how we can protect our collective material culture (aka stuff) in a museum setting, but it also inspired me to open Hangerbee (!), and has greatly shaped how I run my professional workshops and community education classes.

When I teach, I make sure to present the “by the book”, best-practice preservation standards first. Then, we whittle these lofty goal posts down to something that my students are able to achieve in their own homes, with limited time and resources. After all, you are not the V&A.

And from this comes my five standards for a basic storage environment.

An adequate space should be:

Dark

Cool

Dry

Constant

Secure

I tried to think of a good acronym for this but all I came up with was a riff on the ACDC logo. …but without the S for secure.

So let’s start with “Secure” then. What does secure mean in this context? Of course it means that this space should have limited access, whether that means that it’s safe from robbers (!) or perhaps other family members who like to play dress up. The space does not need to be behind glass or locked shut, but it should be out of the way so it won’t be interrupted. The space should also be structurally sound - with no cracks or damage - and be pest-free. The secure space should also be free from excess dirt and debris, but still have adequate air flow.

You might think that a space like this will be tough to find. But for most people, an interior closet on a main or upper level of a finished home should meet this mark. And if pests are making your space insecure, there are plenty of ways to divert them from the area by using a variety of traditional pest control methods. Just make sure that whatever products you use, you are keeping the area free from chemicals that may harm the very things you wish to protect. If you want to dive deep into this subject matter, I recommend visiting https://museumpests.net/.

And if kids playing dress up is the reason your collection is more vulnerable, well, that’s up to you to figure out because I haven’t cracked that case yet. ;)

So that was easy! Come back soon as we discuss the DCDCs environmental standards and how you can easily incorporate them into your home storage plans.