Tragedy at the Sucer House! (minor)

Jsut went down to the locker room of the condo to grab some new mid century modern books to put on Ebay tomorrow... guess what I found?

Soggy... cardboard boxes... water... mold... AARGH!!!!

Here's what went in the dumpster: some Better Homes and Garden's 50's magazines, some Sunset books, some 60's Ladies Home Journals... 50's Life Magazines... I am still hoping my Sweet's Catalogs dry out...

Damn! They were fine 2 days ago. lesson learned - always store things in those plastic tote boxes!

Or, you might consider getting some skids to put everything on top of. Likely cheap or free at the right place and those 3-4 inches will keep the water away to some extent. Of course, the pouring kind it won't help. Damned water! It's caused me plenty of aches and pains over the years.

Cheap but safe method for long-term storage:

Box everything up.

Get heavy duty trash bags and slide the boxes into them.
Slide them in sideways, so the open end of the bag is at the side of the box, not on top.

Twist-tie the bags shut.

Tape labels of the contents to the bags.

Stack boxes on top of plastic milk crates or similar plastic boxes so that they are off of the floor.

I have my entire 1970's collection of Sci Fi toys (a pre-Tiki passion for me... Micronauts rule!) stored in a locker this way... so far, so good.

Arrrrrrrrrrgh! I feel your pain! Got my dehumidifiers and air purifiers running 24/7 down in the basement studio I share with the centipedes and huge hairy spiders. Sometimes if it rains hard enough and hits the house just right I get a waterfall effect on the walls. I even landscaped outside to detour the water but it still manages to find a way in at times. Not so much though!

Better yet: keep you books and magazines in your house where it's resonably climate controlled. You don't have the room? Sell'em baby! Imagine what fun you could have had with the money-now you are just sad...Books don't do well in basements even wrapped in plastic.

And throw some Silica Gel in the bag before you seal it up... I actually double trash bag my deep storage.

Atomic - I AM selling them! That was my 'stock' that got wet. My own books stay in the condo...

That really blows!

Is your storage area usually damp all the time or is this some kind of freak Canadian winter event?

try the suggestion of pallets and plastic storage bins-it might be O.K. in the short term. But if you keep them in there for any length of time you'll probably have problems.

TRUST ME FROM EXPERIENCE!

PS: Dry them out and put them on eBay anyway-you might move them still. Seems like many eBayers have more dollars than sense...

They are drying in my hallway right now.

It looks like some snow or ice melted and came through some cracks or something, it has been above zero here for a few days so that is my theory... I think I will have to go down and investigate any other items left in the storage today... should have done that yesterday, but hey, who wants to clean out their storage room on New Year's Eve?

On 2004-01-01 07:18, tikifish wrote:
but hey, who wants to clean out their storage room on New Year's Eve?

GUILTY!
lol... I've been attacking a mountain of accumulated "stuff" so I can start the year off with a fresh start and not have pangs of guilt every time I have to climb over it to find something.