Thursday, September 25, 2014

Museum Storage Ideas For Your Home

By Karina Frost


Famous institutions that store important cultural treasures put a lot of money and expertise behind how they store their objects and artworks. Although you may not have the resources to invest in top quality museum storage materials and solutions for your personal or business archives, there's still plenty you can learn from the top of the field, and apply to how you pack and preserve what's in your closet or garage.

Museums prioritize their rarest and most valuable objects, investing the most in their preservation. Which of the goods you are storing do you care about the most? Concentrate your financial investment and energy expenditure on your truly one of a kind belongings, if you can't afford to get professional level protection for everything you own.

Once you've identified your key items, protect them with archival quality packing materials. While acid free paper stock can be expensive, mats and envelopes made of this material will protect your items. UV glass is a must for fine works of art, as it keeps sunlight from penetrating in to corrupt or destroy the color scheme of the paints and pigments.

Museums don't keep the same displays in place forever. Every few months, they go into the archives and swap some objects in and out. Rotate items from your storage area often, and if you discover that you haven't taken an item out to display or enjoy for a while, it might not be something you need to retain in your personal archive.

If you don't have enough floor space to display everything you have, use visible containers for your storage space. Transparent clear shelves, bins, or drawers made of glass or plastic let you see what's inside, while maximizing your use of vertical space. You can pack items in from floor to ceiling, fitting a lot inside a single room or closet, when you are able to peek inside thanks to visible containers.

Refresh your storage space from time to time, questioning whether you really need to keep everything in your collection. Pruning your personal archives and clearing some things out permanently can be freeing. Many decluttering experts suggest a "one in, one out" rule, which means that every time you add a new object to your possessions, you get ride of one existing object to make room for what you're adding. This takes some discipline, but when you get rid of objects you don't need, that means you'll have more space to devote to things you really care about.

Museums, libraries, and archival institutions prune and curate constantly. They know the goal isn't to preserve everything, it's to preserve the best things well. Before you try to group your storage objects by type, size, or date, make sure you are not storing things that aren't really worth keeping. Make room for only the most important and best items available.

Museums, libraries, and other archival institutions all have one thing in common. They know what their inventory is, and where it is kept. Follow suit and keep a searchable digital record of what you have, and where it is. As you pack your drawers, bins, and shelves, keep a running log of what objects are contained or stored where in a single word processing document. This creates a searchable digital archive you can use for reference, and easy retrieval.




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