Storage for Your Style: The Best Way to Store Your Clothes

Perhaps you need to store your clothes if you're going travelling, or perhaps you feel a strong affinity with the book Confessions of a Shopaholic. If you have a lot of clothes that you don't want to part with and are opting to put them into long term storage, you need to ensure that you do it correctly. You want to do everything that you can to be certain that your clothes are waiting for you in as good a condition as when you put them into storage. It's not such a complicated process, but it's important that you follow these steps.

Squeaky Clean

The clothes must be clean. Any stains (particularly those caused by food or drinks) can be a magnet for vermin who will have no qualms about damaging your clothes in order to get to the source of that delicious scent.

Bone Dry

Any residual dampness that might be found in the stain can also lead to mould or mildew. The clothes will need to be totally dry. When washing the clothes you might want to set your machine to its maximum spin speed so that as much water as possible is expelled from the garments (which speeds up the drying process). Tumble drying the clothes can be wise, particularly if you haven't allowed enough time to line dry everything. If you don't have a tumble dryer, you can just visit your nearest laundromat.

Plastic Is Fantastic

Only when your clothes are completely dry should they be put into a suitable container. A large plastic storage box is your best bet, but only if it can be sealed with a lid. While the self storage facility will have measures in place to discourage insects and vermin, you still need to take extra steps to protect your clothes. It's possible for insects and vermin to eat or bore their way through cardboard or wooden boxes, even if you have placed the clothes inside a plastic bag before placing them in a cardboard or wooden box.

Extra Space

If you have a lot of clothes to store, you might not be able to source enough large plastic storage boxes to accommodate them all. If this is the case, you should invest in some vacuum storage bags—the kind that are specially designed to compress clothes for travel or storage. You simply pack your clothes inside the bag before sucking out the air with your vacuum cleaner, compressing the overall mass of the clothes. The compressed vacuum storage bags can then be placed inside the plastic storage boxes.  If you use this option, your clothes might benefit from a quick iron when you retrieve them. The compression process can lead to some noticeable creases and wrinkles.

So while it's certainly not complicated to store your clothes, you need to follow these few basic steps to keep them in an excellent condition until they're ready to be worn again.


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