So you need to store some stuff in Arkansas? Let me tell you, it’s a whole different ball game here. That thick, wet air doesn’t just ruin your hair—it’ll ruin your couch, your books, your photo albums… anything you care about.
I learned this the hard way. I stored a bunch of my mom’s old books in our garage inside what I thought were “perfectly good cardboard boxes.” When I went to get them out a year later, they were stuck together. The pages were wavy and felt damp. Some of them had these little spots of mold. It was a total loss. I felt terrible.
So, let me save you from making my mistakes. Here’s the real deal on keeping your stuff safe.
First, you have to accept one thing
Cardboard is the enemy. I don’t care if it’s a free box from U-Haul. In this humidity, it acts like a sponge. It pulls moisture right out of the air and holds it against your things. Just don’t do it.
Go to Dollar General or Walmart and buy those plastic totes with the lids that snap on all the way around. The solid colored ones are cheaper. Get those. It’s a few bucks now, but it saves you from crying over a moldy wedding dress later.
Next, become a weirdo who saves those little “do not eat” packets. You know, the ones that come in new shoes and purses? I keep a jar of them in my laundry room. Before I seal up a plastic tote, I toss in a few of those packets. They suck the moisture right up. If you want to get fancy, you can buy a big bag of them on Amazon for, like, ten bucks. For bigger spaces, get a bucket of DampRid. You just open it and it pulls water right out of the air. It’s wild.
Now, the big one
If you’re getting a storage unit, you absolutely need one that’s climate-controlled. I used to think that was for fancy people. It’s not. It’s for anyone in Arkansas who doesn’t want their stuff to rot.
A regular metal unit gets hot as an oven during the day and cools down at night. That change makes the moisture in the air sweat all over your cold furniture and metal tools. A climate-controlled unit is insulated and has its own air conditioner. It keeps the temperature steady so your stuff doesn’t sweat. It’s the difference between leaving your bread on the counter (it gets moldy) and putting it in the fridge (it stays fresh).
I help my cousin run his place, A-Affordable Storage, and the number one thing we do is talk people into climate control. They’re always hesitant about the extra twenty bucks a month, but I show them pictures of a rusted tool chest we pulled from a standard unit. They change their minds real fast. We’ve seen it all, and we’d rather you get the right thing from the start.
A couple other quick things that actually help
Put everything on pallets. Don’t let your boxes sit directly on the concrete floor. Concrete draws moisture. Pallets create a buffer. If you don’t have pallets, even a few 2x4s will work.
- Don’t pack things in wall-to-wall. Leave a little walkway down the middle so air can move around. Stuffy, still air is what mold loves.
- Never, ever wrap wood or fabric in plastic tarps. It traps the humidity right against it. Use an old cotton sheet instead. It needs to breathe.
- That’s it. That’s the secret sauce. It’s not rocket science, it’s just doing a few simple things differently because we live in a swampy paradise.
If you’re still not sure, just come talk to us. At A-Affordable Storage, we’re just folks who live here too. We’ll give you the straight story and help you find a spot where your things will be just as good when you come back for them. We don’t want you to have that “I ruined my stuff” feeling. We’ve all been there, and it stinks.
0 Comments