Storage Ideas for Attics & How to Preserve Your Items

Perfect ways to keep your family treasures intact with storage ideas for attics

 What’s in your attic? Seriously, what’s up there? Family heirlooms? Holiday decorations? Outgrown toys and dusty memories? Do you have a long-lost work of art hiding under your trusses? Wouldn’t that be something!

We have all daydreamed about the idea of coming across some treasure hidden away in our attic or basement.

Well, just in case, here are a few storage ideas for attics to help keep your potential treasures safe!

First, be sure you have added your DIY Attic Dek® panels so that you can easily access your stored items.

Second, make sure what you’re storing in the attic can safely live up there, potentially for a while:

• Holiday decorations that can be safely stored: faux trees, glass bulbs, your menorah, that blow up snow globe, plastic eggs, and plastic jack-o-lanterns

• How about that snow sled, snowshoes, pail and shovel, and your metal flagpole? Yes, those are fine. But you may want to skip placing the flags in the attic and we will tell you why below.

• Wakeboard, flowerpots, and wind chimes…sure thing.

• Luggage and travel trunks are fine if they are not made of fabric. Most mirrors, silver, glass, and dishware would be safe too.

Wow, that’s a lot that you can move out of your cupboards and closets to free up space and declutter your home! Now, there are some items that you should not store in your attic or that you should store there after you take particular care.

Wooden fur niture, perhaps, comprises the largest category of objects falling victim to damage by attic storage.

Do not store grandma’s 200-year-old rocking chair up there unless you happen to have a climate-controlled attic…which most do not. The temperature and humidity changes can really damage your wonderful old wooden pieces. The swelling, cracking, and drying are real enemies of any pieces of wood.

Third, keep in mind other contributing factors that can eat away at your stored items. The climate is not the only thing of which you need to be aware, there are a host of little critters that can hurt your more fragile objects; moths, beetles, silverfish and even squirrels and raccoons can wreak havoc on your memorabilia.

Carpets, rugs, and stuffed animal toys, or taxidermy pieces, should be stored elsewhere. Both the environment and bugs can absolutely devastate these valued items.

Vintage clothing and leather can mold or mildew or become nest fillers and snack food for some pests.

Lastly, and most importantly, photographs, books, and paper documents are too valuable to risk placing in your attic. Put these items in a safe environment with no big temperature or humidity swings and no potential pests. Here is a useful article by trace.com with suggestions to preserve your irreplaceable photos and documents.

5 Ways to Preserve Your Past

A basic rule of thumb to follow is synthetics…plastic and metal are safe to store in your attic, but natural fibers and cloth are not.

We hope these storage ideas for attics are helpful in keeping your belongings safe for years to come. Attic Dek will help by providing a sturdy foundation that allows air flow, i.e., no warping and no termites nibbling on that floor! Tubs and totes help make great storage bins for the items that can withstand the attic’s ever-changing environment.

Just for fun, here are some lost treasures that have been discovered in the forgotten corner of an attic:

A van Gogh painting discovered in a Norwegian attic

A long-lost Rembrandt painting discovered in New Jersey