02/21/2018

The Importance of Where You Store Your Clothes

There are many things that make me uniquely qualified to do this job, but I think the biggest thing is that my life (most of the time thanks to my husband) is the ultimate guide of what not to do. Here’s the latest story.

A year ago, my husband’s company was sold, and he temporarily went to work for the new owners to help them make the transition. After about 6 months, they no longer needed his services. We knew this was coming and prepared for it, so Matt took some time off to tear down our old barn and to build a new one.

As he was preparing to tear down the old barn, he had to put all his stuff somewhere, so he borrowed his uncle’s horse trailer (shown in the photo just to the right of the new barn) and stored most of his things – tools he doesn’t use frequently, sports gear, hunting gear, and so on – in that trailer. Now that he’s almost finished with the barn, he’s started unloading the trailer, and what he’s discovering is that it probably wasn’t such a good idea to store his hunting clothes in that trailer. I know you know that horse trailers are not temperature controlled, air-tight (notice the tarp covering the openings for the horses), and critter proof. To top it off, he put his stuff in boxes or wooden cabinets.

The interesting thing was that when I put them in the washer, they just looked dirty. When I pulled them out of the washer, they looked like they do now. That’s because holes due to insect damage don’t appear until after the garment has been cleaned because the fabric was likely weakened by insects, then the agitation the garment received during the cleaning process caused unbroken but weakened fibers to break.

The lesson we should learn from this? In previous blog posts, we’ve shared that you should always store your clothes in a cool, dry, clean place; never store your clothes in a cold basement or hot attic. We should add never store your garments in a horse trailer. These places are not temperature controlled and are more likely to house critters and insects that like to munch on fabric that hasn’t been cleaned properly. To learn more about how to properly store out-of-season clothes, click here. Learn more about storing your clothes at any A Cleaner World location.