Tips on how to store your wooden furniture

Storing all different kinds of items requires different tactics and approaches. However, when it comes to storing, one of the trickier types of items is wooden furniture. Due to the physical properties of wood, a lot of precaution must be taken. So if you decide to store your wooden furniture, you’d better prepare yourself for a good deal of research and preparation. After all, just pacing your wooden furniture without any forethought can have a very negative impact on some these items of yours. To save you time on research, however, we’ve compiled this article. So read along to find out what you will need to know to store your wooden furniture successfully.

Planning to store your wooden furniture

When you decide to store your wooden furniture, one thing you should pay attention to is planning. No matter if you are storing your pieces of wooden furniture for a short period or you are going for a more long term solution, some planning will always be involved. The main thing you need to consider is where you intend to store your wooden furniture. The environment of your storage plays a huge role here. The differences between storing in a room of your home, your basement or in a climate and humidity controlled storage unite are vast!

Obviously, a storage unit with climate and humidity control would be an ideal place to store your wooden furniture. But that doesn’t mean the other storing options should be ignored. The main thing here is to know what to look out for. And that is – humidity and change in temperature. These two factors will play the most prominent role once it comes to storing your wooden furniture. The reason for this is because high humidity can cause rot and mildew on your stored wooden pieces. On the other hand, changing temperatures can have such a great impact on your wooden pieces, even the Wood Component Manufacturer’s Association warns about it. Basically, changes in temperature can cause your wooden furniture to bend and crack.

So where should you store your wooden furniture?

As we mentioned above the ideal situation would be to rent a humidity and temperature controlled storage unit. However, these don’t come cheap. So for the sake of your budget, you might want to settle with a different option. Like storing your wooden pieces in a room of your home. If you pick that, make sure you avoid high humidity rooms, like basements. Try to pick a room where you can keep the temperature relatively even. You don’t have to heat it actively, the heat from the rest of your house should do just fine. You can use the leftover moving boxes to line the floor, as these tend to be cooler than the rest of the room. Also, you might want to consider purchasing a heater or a dehumidifier. These can help keep the conditions of your stored wooden furniture good, even in rooms such as the basement.

How to prepare your furniture for storing?

No matter if you store your furniture in a top of the line facility or just in a room of your home, there are steps you need to take to prepare your wooden furniture for storage. So let’s go through this real quick.

Cleaning and treating.

First on our list is cleaning the furniture. Just like with storing anything from a toaster to even a motorcycle, cleaning the item first is an essential step. You want to de-dust and wipe your furniture first and then apply an anti-bacterial solution to it. Just make sure to use one that won’t damage any part of your piece. Also, make sure the piece of furniture is dry when you are done. Both these steps will lower the chance of mildew and other issues on your stored furniture.

Next up is treating. By treating your furniture, we mean applying certain chemicals that will keep your wooden furniture from cracking. As we mentioned before, changes in temperature can lead to this. However, it can happen due to another reason. That is – dryness. Cracks in wooden furniture can be really hard or even impossible to repair. That’s why treating the wood before you store your wooden furniture is so important. A few weeks before you store your wooden furniture, apply a coat of wax or polish to it. This tip applies not only to storing but also to shipping your wooden furniture, as it will protect your wooden furniture in both cases.

Taking it apart

Another thing you can do to make it easier to store your wooden furniture is to take it apart. If you see pieces of furniture that can be taken off without damage to the whole piece, you can disassemble it. That will make storing the whole piece easier, as well as let you treat it more thoroughly. Just make sure you take notes on how it was assembled so you can put it back together. Another thing that you could do is tape the screws you took out to disassemble the piece, to the furniture itself in a bag, so you don’t lose them.

Wrapping your wooden furniture before you store it

Another thing you should do before you store your wooden furniture is to wrap it up. This step will serve a dual purpose. First of all, it will protect your furniture from physical damage, like dents and scratches. Second of all, it will protect your wooden furniture from wood parasites that pose the greatest threat to wooden furniture in and out of storage. Please note, however, that there are tips out there that would recommend using plastic, like bubble wrap, to wrap your furniture. Do not do this. Having a plastic wrap will cause the humidity from the air to condense into droplets, pressed against your wooden furniture. Just like humidity in the air, this will do a lot of damage to your furniture piece. What you should do instead is use cloth. Wrap your furniture in cotton sheets to let it breathe, while still being protected.

Store your wooden furniture easily

The idea behind this article was to help you store your wooden furniture with ease. We are confident that, after reading through it, you are far better prepared to deal with this complicated task. Just take it slow and make sure you prepare everything right, and you will be just fine.