How to Store Your Clothing | Storing Your Sweaters, Shirts, etc.

Hey gents, today we are going to talk about storing your clothing.

Why?

Because once you start buying nicer, better products, you’ll realize how important it is to make them last by taking care of them properly.

A couple years ago, moths ate several holes into one of my cashmere sweaters after wearing the piece for just one season! If you’ve lost any clothing to moths over the past couple of years, you’ll find this article very helpful for making sure not to let that happen again!

Since summer is approaching, and I’m storing away all my winter clothes for the next few months, I knew I had to do some of the research on how to best store your winter clothes so you don’t lose any clothes to moths like I did.

Read on, gentlemen, and spare yourselves my fate. 

Store Your Clothes Cool, Dry, and Clean

First off, you need to make sure your clothes themselves are cool, dry and clean before you put them into storage. This means not a trace of moisture anywhere: before you store your winter clothes away, make sure they’re clean and completely dry.

If you have a lot of winter suits to store, you might consider a trip to the dry cleaners first. Just make sure not to store them in the plastic bag they’ll give you: it’s an air and moisture trap that can destroy your clothing faster than moths.

Additionally, your storage space must be equally clean and dry as the clothes themselves. You may not see the inside of your closet too often but it’s worth keeping it tidy and dry for the sake of your clothes’ longevity.

If your house’s storage area is wet or moist, avoid it if at all possible. If you need to (say, for example, there’s water damage or excessive mold in your house), you might consider investing in an offsite storage unit.

A Brief word on equipment

The garment storage materials from The Hanger Project can hold up to six garments inside. This is an awesome brand when it comes to clothing storage and these garment bags are pretty effective when it comes to keeping dust off the garments and keeping the pieces relatively clean. 

Credit: The Hanger Project

If you want to take it a step further, you can always use some moth balls but I prefer Cedar Planks. They get the job done every bit as effectively and they smell really good.

I recommend cedar hangers (also available from The Hanger Project) for the same reason. I use these in my regular closet, but they’re also a good choice for long-term storage of winter clothes.

I also use two other pieces of equipment for storing my winter clothes, both of which are available from Woodlore: their cedar crates and their ecofresh planks. As you may know, I toured their factory awhile back and I got to see first-hand that they’re using American trees and manufacturing in all their products.

I absolutely love Woodlore’s products. Keep reading to see how I use them to store my winter clothes.

Storing Winter Clothes

I should mention that before I even start storing my winter clothes, I go through my wardrobe and get rid of everything I didn’t wear the previous winter. If it’s in good condition and clean, I donate it. Otherwise, it just goes in the trash.

I’m always surprised at how much space in my closet that this frees up. Makes the whole process quite a bit easier too.

 To keep everything in long-term storage fresh, I use the ecofresh cedar planks I mentioned above. You can put them on shelves, on the floor of your closet, or even hang them to keep your winter clothes smelling and looking fresh.

But with some of my clothes (in particular my sweaters), I wanted to take it a step further. 

As I mentioned above, Woodlore makes these awesome cedar crates in which you can store your winter clothes. They’re pretty large, so you can use them for anything that folds neatly (trousers, jeans, scarves, etc…), but I especially like them for my sweaters, not all of which are cheap. They’re my best assurance against losing another cashmere sweater to moths.

Keeping your sweaters and other winter clothes in one of these boxes allows for better organization and is a sure-fire way to prevent mold and moth damage since they’re made of Cedar.

Isn’t that a thing of beauty?

Final Thoughts

So there you have it gents: my new equipment and SOP for storing my winter clothes.

I will not lose any more cashmere and I have Woodlore to thank for that!

I was really impressed with the range of storage products they offer: sock storage, tie storage, but then also these big crates that they offer so you can store all your nice stuff in a variety of ways.

What about you guys? What are your favorite storage hacks? Did you manage to clean out your closet this year in spite of the quarantine? Let me know down in the comments or let’s connect on Instagram or Twitter.

This is another one of those posts that I’ve been planning to do for the past couple of years and I’m glad I finally got to it. Hope it helps.

Until next time, gents…

This is the Kavalier.