Almost nothing is damaged in storage by the storage. It is damaged in the handling either side, or by being sealed in with something it should not have been sealed in with. Both are avoidable in the ten minutes it takes to pack a box properly.
Heavy things go in small boxes
The instinct is the opposite — big box, fill it up — and it is how boxes fail. Books, tools and crockery go in the smallest box available; bedding, cushions and clothing go in the large ones. A box you cannot lift comfortably will be dropped by somebody eventually, and a box that flexes in the middle will collapse the one below it on a shelf.
Aim for around 15 kg as an upper limit, whatever the size.
Fill the gaps, square off the top
Empty space inside a box is what lets contents move, and movement is what breaks things. Pack to the top and fill the voids — clothing and towels work as well as paper and are already going into storage anyway.
A box packed flat to the top stacks. A bulging one does not, and whatever goes on top of it slides off.
The five things that should not go in
These are the ones that cause problems weeks later, from inside the box.
- Anything liquid — cosmetics, cleaning products, half-used paint. Temperature swings push liquids past their seals.
- Food of any kind, including sealed and dried. It is what attracts pests to an otherwise clean facility.
- Batteries left in devices — remote controls, torches, toys. They leak and destroy the thing they are inside.
- Anything damp. A towel that felt dry after a beach trip is enough to mildew a box of linen over a season.
- Candles and anything wax-based, which slump in a warm month and never recover their shape.
Label for the person opening it in November
Write the contents on two adjacent sides, not the lid — on a shelf the lid is the one face nobody can see. 'Kitchen — pots, colander, mixing bowls' is a label; 'kitchen' is a shrug.
If your boxes are with us, the photo inventory does this job for you: every box is photographed and barcoded to your account, so retrieval is a search rather than a memory test.
Electronics, art and timber
Screens travel upright, never flat, and keep their original box if you have it. Framed art goes on edge with corner protection, never stacked face-down. Solid timber is the one thing genuinely at risk from the storage environment itself rather than the handling — which is why humidity control is worth asking any operator about before you sign.