Photos, Memorabilia, and Collections

Take a lesson from one of my clients. Keep your photos, special memorabilia, and collections in plastic containers to keep out water from flooded basements or bugs.

Example, my client lives in a basement apartment. One day the sump-pump didn’t work and the basement flooded about six inches. She had some very precious, can’t be replace (before the digital age) photos that were in a box on the floor that got soaked. Needless to say, the photos stuck together like glue and formed a “brick” of photos. We are now in the process of trying to find a place to restore them, but it is going to be expense and may not even work. Lesson learned, keep things of importance either up high or in plastic bins.

If you keep your photos in a large plastic container, try to sort them out by date or event, and put them in acid free photo boxes(labeled by how they are sorted) and then place them in the plastic container (also labeled with the contents of the box).

Now keep in mind, if there is a MAJOR flood in your region, nothing is going to save these types of items unless you put them in something air tight (like a space bag). This is great for collections (i.e. old items from family members, such as grandma’s high school year book and class photos, your letterman jacket from high school, etc.). If you have the space, some of these items should be displayed, but if you just wish to store them, double protect them by using a space bag and then putting that in a plastic container.

In regards to collections which you don’t have room to display (i.e. grandma’s china set or your shot glass collection), I recommend placing them in plastic bins as well and wrap them up with bubble wrap. If you leave them in a cardboard box and there is a flood, the boxes will breakdown and when you go to lift them up, the collection will fall out and go everywhere (which you don’t want to happen). This will also keep out the bugs that roam in dark places (where you may have things stored). Nothing is worse than opening a box to look at grandma’s tea cups and a hobo spider comes crawling out. Not only is it shocking, but if you get bitten, you can get extremely ill, so why take the chance.

I hope by learning from someone else’s tragedy you learn something on storing valuable items. If you need assistance, call a Professional Organizer in your area for assistance or contact me at 503-481-0779 (if in the Portland OR metro area).