How to store books so they survive a decade

Books are not usually ruined by being read. They are ruined in the six months they spend in a basement between one move and the next. Almost all of the damage a supply counter sees comes from four causes, and every one of them is preventable.

Damp is the one that destroys

Paper is hygroscopic — it absorbs moisture from the air and releases it again, swelling and shrinking as it does. That cycle is what makes pages cockle, boards warp and spines split.

Above roughly sixty-five per cent relative humidity, mould becomes possible, and mould on paper is effectively permanent. It leaves foxing marks, it weakens the fibre, and the spores spread to everything stored nearby.

Practical consequences:

• A basement or a garage is the worst place in a building for books, and it is where most people put them.
• Never store books against an exterior wall or directly on a concrete floor. Concrete wicks moisture continuously.
• Cardboard cartons absorb moisture and pass it straight to the contents. A rigid plastic box with a lid does not.

If books must go in an unheated space, raise the boxes off the floor on a pallet or a batten and leave a gap behind them.

Light fades more than you expect

Ultraviolet breaks down dyes and paper. A dust jacket in a sunny window loses its colour in a single summer — reds go first, then blues, leaving a jacket that looks bleached along the spine.

Books on open shelves in a bright room should not face a window directly. Books in storage should be in an opaque box or a closed cupboard. This is the cheapest fix on the list, because it costs nothing to move a shelf.

Heat is slow and cumulative

Warmth accelerates the chemical breakdown of paper, particularly the acidic paper used in mass-market printing from the mid twentieth century onwards. It also softens the adhesives used in perfect binding, which is why a paperback left in a hot car returns with a spine that will not hold shut.

Steady and cool is what paper wants. Fluctuating is worse than consistently warm, because the swelling and shrinking cycle does the mechanical damage.

Stacking, which is the mechanical half

How books sit decides what happens to the binding.

Upright is correct, supported on both sides so they stand square rather than leaning. A book left leaning for a year takes a permanent skew, and the spine creases along the lean.

Flat is acceptable for oversize and heavy volumes, which is how a large art book should be stored — its own weight will pull the text block out of a binding that is standing on end. Stack flat, largest at the bottom, and no more than a few high.

Spine-down is the one to avoid. Standing a book on its fore-edge lets gravity pull the text block away from the spine. Repeat that over months and the block detaches.

Do not pack a box so tightly that removing a book requires pulling on the headcap at the top of the spine. That is the commonest cause of a torn spine on an otherwise sound book.

What to put them in

A storage container for books needs three things: a rigid structure that will not sag, a lid that keeps dust and light out, and a size you can actually lift when it is full.

That last one is not a joke. Books are dense. A large box that is easy to carry empty becomes a two-person lift full of hardbacks, and a box that flexes in the middle when lifted has already started to crush its own contents.

Medium boxes, filled completely so nothing shifts, are better than large ones half filled. Clear boxes have the practical advantage of letting you see what is inside without opening anything.

Zip bags with reinforced handles suit a different job — short-term moves, seasonal storage, and protecting a run of books inside a larger container. Doubled zips matter, because a single zip is where the dust gets in.

Dust jackets and paperbacks

A dust jacket is the part of a hardback that gets damaged first and matters most to its condition. For long storage, either leave it on the book or store it flat and separately; do not fold it inside the book, because the fold becomes permanent.

Paperbacks curl. A paperback stored upright and unsupported bows towards the light. Pack them tightly enough to hold each other flat.

Before a book goes into a box

Three things, none of which takes long.

1. Make sure it is dry. A book that has been anywhere damp needs days of air first, standing with pages fanned.
2. Take out anything that is not paper: bookmarks with metal, pressed flowers, sticky notes, rubber bands. Metal rusts, plant matter attracts insects, and adhesive migrates into the paper.
3. Do not wrap in newspaper. Newsprint ink transfers, and newsprint is the most acidic paper in an ordinary house.

Checking on them

Books in long storage should be looked at once a year. You are checking for two things: a musty smell, which is the first sign of a humidity problem, and any sign of insect activity in the box.

A box that smells musty should be opened and aired somewhere dry. Left closed, a small problem becomes the whole box.

What we stock for this

The rigid boxes, the clear stackable cases and the zip storage bags are all on the book storage and cases page, with internal dimensions in every listing so you can measure a shelf or a cupboard first. Magazine and periodical files are in the same group. If you are looking for something to read rather than something to store it in, the books page is the other half of the shop.