Monday, September 22, 2014

Tips For Museum Storage At Home

By Karina Frost


Great archival institutions put a lot of thought and effort and expense into storing artworks and historical and scientific artifacts. While you might not be able to afford complete museum storage solutions for your personal belongings or your company's items, you can still learn from these masters. Read on to discover some museum inspired concepts that you can adapt for everyday use.

Museums and libraries prioritize, putting the most resources behind the preservation of their most important irreplaceable artifacts and objects. If you don't have the money, time, or energy to protect all of the items you want to store, which are the most important? Concentrate on protecting the things you have that are truly one of a kind, rather than worrying about all your objects equally.

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.

Lots of museums change their exhibits frequently. Consider swapping things in and out of your storage area every few months, to get true enjoyment from the objects you have. If you are storing things you don't make use of or don't take pleasure in seeing regularly, it might be time to let some of what you're keeping go, to make space for other things.

Vertical space is efficient, so place shelves floor to ceiling in your closet or garage. Minimize confusion by using clear transparent shelves, bins, and drawers, made of clear plastic or glass so that you can see what you have. Knowing what you've got and where it is follows the best practices of professional archive maintenance.

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.

The attitude that museums and other archival institutions like libraries take is that the best of the past is worth keeping. They don't try to preserve everything in the world, only the objects and items that they feel have true value. Before you worry about grouping your stuff by type, size, or era, be sure that you are keeping only the best and most important items available.

Finally, keep an up to date index or catalog of what you have. As you pack, just write down the contents of each bin or shelf in one big document on your computer. This creates a digital list you can search later on so that, just like a museum, you will know where all of your objects are, making retrieval a snap.




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