[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

IMO, it sounds like she's being overly cautious, but then again it depends what you're putting in these boxes (how much they mean to you) and what your risk tolerance is.

Tolerance? ME? Surely you jest Sorry, too easy joke to skip. Basically if I'm willing to pay to ship it to Miami and pay to store it, then for one reason or another we'd like it survive.

So then you'd have to ask yourself how long stuff is going to be in there and how humid stuff gets.

We won't use any storage that isn't climate controlled, so assuming reliability / no catastrophic long term system failure that issue is moot(ish). There are things that we know are (very) long term storage, primarily furniture* but also some boxed items surely. It gets trickier because there's stuff that I can't be certain whether it ends up used within 6-12 months OR stores infinitely until I actually know where I'm living long term, what spaces to fill, what works/doesn't work in the space. Sure, that's an unknowable at this point ... but it still doesn't make the process any easier.

If it's important enough and will be stored long enough there may actually be a case to buy strong stackable plastic containers (although those could melt in the heat if not climate controlled).

OOH, that raises a specific question for you/the board. Re: those stackable totes. I'm familiar with both the (typically) gray Rubbermaid ones as well as the usually clear Sterilite ones. I've seen the latter become brittle and literally break/shatter .. but I haven't a clue whether that's commonplace, climate influenced, or just shitty luck on my part. Those ARE considerably cheaper ... anybody have long term storage experience with those cheaper ones? Are they more okay than I'm currently feeling, or are they just a bad idea beyond short term?

Again, it's hard to know what to do without seeing how much you have and what it is, so this is generalized advice that may or may not be useful.

How much? Too fucking much, that's how much lol. Will summed it up pretty neatly "we live in an antiques store in a Rooms-To-Go world". There's certainly a wide range of things and monetary values, but you don't have to walk far in here to find something 100+ years old. There's several boxes of books alone that are 125 years old and beyond (I'm guessing the combined total of books to keep between her stuff & my stuff, plus some Will stuff, will be 40-60 boxes of books alone)

One last thing I thought of is you could use double-walled boxes just for the bottom row and stack 2-3 on top of that. Less chance of collapse.

Hmm .. not bad, hadn't thought about that. Good shit.

We've never really had that much fragile/important stuff to store, so it's not really come up for us.

For better or worse, that's kind of the opposite to here. Quite a bit of what I've called "furniture nobody should sit on", OMG don't touch that fragile glass, china, etc.

I've disposed of the vast majority of that -- it's simply not compatible with MY individual lifestyle -- I didn't need 50+ decorative plates that hang on the walls, etc but some treasures do remain and will be sticking around in perpetuity.