The British climate isn’t such a bad one really. We have beautiful crisp spring mornings when the grass is new and green and the daffodils are in full bloom everywhere you look and cool misty autumn evenings when the leaves are piled high in a thousand different shades of yellow, brown and red. In between we’ve got warm (but not too warm) sunny summer days perfect for getting outside and enjoying ourselves. Even our winters aren’t too cold, with just enough snow to add a touch of excitement.

However, there is one downside to the British climate – the damp. It rains, it rains, it rains and just for good measure it rains some more. In most places humidity stays high throughout the winter and we’re served a steady diet of showers, drizzle, downpours, sleet, hail, and fog. More or less any way water can come out of the sky, we get it.

This constant dampness can cause problems when you’re putting things into long term storage or even just confining your summer clothes to the garage or basement shelving unit for a few months over the chilly season. Because nothing really dries out without being heated or properly aired, once something has gotten damp it stays damp.

You can avoid problems with damp and associated issues like mold and warping by arranging your storage containers carefully. First, don’t keep vulnerable items like papers and books in cardboard boxes. Use plastic, which keeps the damp out, and make sure everything going into the boxes is perfectly dry. If most of your storage is in cardboard boxes, put them up off the floor on a shelving unit- keeping boxes off the ground will go a long way towards stopping the contents from getting damp.