6 antique storage mistakes that could ruin your family heirlooms

From temperature to packing materials, learn which antique storage mistakes to avoid to keep your heirlooms in great condition.

Storing antiques and heirlooms comes with some risk, and it can be difficult to know the best methods to ensure your items are protected. To help you confidently store your antiques, we’ve spoken with a veteran collector and appraiser about the most common storage mistakes and how to better keep them from damage.

Meet the Expert

Zenna Inness is a veteran collector and appraiser, as well as a customer support specialist at Ruby Lane, Inc., an online marketplace that specializes in antiques, vintage collectibles, fine art, and jewelry.

Common Antique Storage Mistakes

Storing antiques properly can be tricky, but Zenna Inness, veteran collector and appraiser at Ruby Lane, shares common mistakes to avoid and useful tips she’s learned from her personal experience.

1. Not Documenting Stored Items

Inness’s first antique storage tip has less to do with avoiding damage and more to do with preserving an item’s history. She says you shouldn’t expect your heirs to know why an item was worth holding onto. “If it’s worth storing for your posterity, it’s worth documenting,” she says. “Don’t expect others to know or care about stored objects unless you help them to understand why they should,” she explains, suggesting the following:

• Include notes in storage: “Make notes to pass along with special family pieces, like ‘grandfather’s Army uniform’ or ‘great-grandmother’s Votes for Women parade-worn sash,’” explains Inness.
• Save receipts: “Save the sales receipts of collectible items you purchased, such as art or antiques,” she advises.

2. Storing in Direct Sunlight

When it comes to antique storage, Inness calls direct sunlight “the enemy of pretty much everything.”

“Keep all worthy items stored out of direct sun or you will eventually have faded tabletops, destroyed fabrics, antique book spines that have gone pale, anemic works of art, and almost unreadable framed samplers,” she warns.

3. Trapping Moisture in Plastic Bins

Plastic bins are excellent at keeping pests away from valuables, antiques, heirlooms, and other stored items. Still, this tight seal can be detrimental for certain items if you don’t account for moisture inside the bins. To avoid this fate, ensure that you completely dry all items before storing and add desiccants to the bins. If possible, try to avoid airtight bins altogether.

Tip

It’s a good idea to periodically check on your stored items, so you can catch potential damage before it worsens.

4. Storing in an Unvented Space

While it’s obvious that an unvented space can trap moisture that can damage antiques and other items, Inness warns that these spaces can cause further damage if exposed to chemical fumes, such as bleach and other cleaning products.

Ensure your storage spaces are properly ventilated to avoid damage from moisture buildup and chemical fume exposure.

5. Storing Items with Degrading Items

If some of your antiques are showing visible signs of degradation, Inness says you should be wary of storing other items alongside them.

“Pieces exhibiting signs of degrading, like surface stickiness, weeping, or producing an obvious, strong odor, can impact stable items in their vicinity, so those should be isolated and stored elsewhere, or destroyed,” she explains.

To avoid this, always carefully inspect items for damage before storing them with other items.

6. Storing in High or Low Humidity

While Inness says that humid storage conditions can be good or bad depending on the item, it’s safe to say that nearly every item will suffer if stored in extremely humid or extremely dry air.

“Antique wood furniture can be troubled by the very dry air commonly found in most modern houses,” she says.

While it can be difficult to monitor and control the humidity levels of traditional storage rooms (such as attics, basements, closets, storage facilities, etc.), Inness has an alternative storage solution that she says can “be good for both you and your antique furniture.”

“Rather than packing precious things away to continue their existence in a damp basement or hot attic, consider instead installing a humidifier and humidistat on your HVAC system to maintain just the right level of humidity inside your house,” she offers. “Protective archival framing, careful placement away from windows, and judiciously ‘storing’ other precious objects with you, in your own interior spaces, can allow you to enjoy living with things you are saving.”

Antique Storage Tips

Protect your treasured antiques with these expert-approved storage tips.

• Use acid-free tissue: Acid-free tissue is beneficial for storing paper items, photographs, textiles, and more, as its neutral pH can help prevent degradation, discoloration, and yellowing.
• Avoid airtight containers: Inness recommends avoiding airtight bins whenever possible. If you must use them, it might be wise to include a desiccant inside to absorb any trapped moisture.
• Avoid attics and basements: We get it, it’s tempting to store antiques and heirlooms in attics and basements so they don’t take up space inside your living area, but these environments nearly always lead to damage.
• Inventory your stored items: As you pack stuff away in storage, keep an organized inventory of what’s stored. You may think you’ll easily remember what’s in each bin, but trust us, you likely will not.

Read the original article on Better Homes & Gardens