How To Properly Store Your Winter Clothes (And What To Avoid)

The dawn of spring is a time of rebirth outside, but inside, it’s a period of reorganization in the home. Curtains are changed, motifs are swapped out, and your bulky winter clothes get packed away for the summer. As you start to pack up your winter clothes, however, there are some things you need to remember to ensure they don’t become damaged or ruined in storage.

When you pack away your winter clothes, you must first ensure all garments are properly cleaned and dried. Be strategic with how you group and pack your clothes so it’s easier to unpack them later. Use air-tight containers to keep moisture and pests out of your clothes, and add cedar chips to repel pests. Lavender and other fragrant sachets can keep your clothes smelling great.

Storing winter clothes is a smart idea, especially if you live in a cold climate and have a lot of cold-weather gear. This process allows you to free up tons of space in your closet, and it can even preserve your winter clothes so they last longer. Before you pack all your winter clothes, however, you should keep reading. Below is a list of some top tips to remember when storing winter garments to ensure they don’t get damaged, and instead stay perfectly preserved.

13 Ways To Safely Store Your Winter Clothes This Spring

1. Use Reliable Airtight Containers

One of the best ways to ensure your winter clothes are safely stored in the spring and summer is to use durable airtight containers. Large plastic and locking storage totes are ideal. For one, they are usually easy to stack, making storing clothes easier.

Furthermore, plastic acts as a great barrier against moisture and pests. Your containers should be air-tight, as even small cracks can allow moths and other fabric-eating insects into your clothes. Airtight containers also help keep rodents out and will protect your garments if there is a small flooding event in your home.

2. Label Each Container With Details

If you live somewhere with unpredictable weather, then there's a chance you may find yourself digging through your winter clothes in storage in May, June, or September. To make this search easier, you should always label your airtight containers with details.

Don’t simply write “winter clothes” on a label. Instead, get specific and write whether there are pants, sweaters, scarves, mittens, or other garments in each tote. This will make searching for them easier, and it will also help with unpacking them in the fall.

3. Wash And Dry Clothing Before Storing

To ensure you don’t have any mold, mildew, or other potentially catastrophic issues with your winter clothes in storage, you must ensure they are clean and dry before packing them away. The best way to guarantee this is to wash and dry all your clothes before you store them.

Just because something is hanging in your closet, it doesn't mean it’s clean. Food stains and wet clothes can go undetected if you aren’t careful. In turn, they can sprout into a moldy and stinky mess, ruining a lot of your favorite garments.

Feel clothes to ensure they are dry, and check all pockets to confirm they are empty.

4. Choose A Cool, Dry Place For Your Winter Clothes

Another thing to remember when storing your winter clothes is that location matters. Clothing should always be stored in a cool, dry place. Heat can affect some fabrics and hardware negatively, as can extreme temperature fluctuations.

Since winter clothes are stored during the summer months, finding a cool place can be challenging, but you should do your best to find one. If you opt to store clothes in the basement, ensure it isn’t too humid, as moisture can cause even more damage than heat. 

5. Try Vacuum-Sealed Bags For Bulky Sweaters And Puffy Coats

In addition to storing clothes in an airtight container, you may want to go the extra mile and store your bulkier items in vacuum-sealed bags. These bags are great at reducing how much space clothing takes up, especially puffy coats and loose knitted sweaters. 

In addition to saving space, these bags act as an extra layer of protection against humidity and pests. So, consider using these bags for your favorite bulky items to ensure they are well-protected.

6. Snap Polaroids Of Each Box’s Contents Before Packing Them

One trick that can save you a lot of time if you need to access winter clothes in the off-season is to have photos of what's inside each container. Use a Polaroid camera (or print out photos from your cell phone) of what’s inside each airtight container. 

Lay the garments out on a flat surface before snapping the photo. This makes it easy for you to find the exact location of a specific garment, which might otherwise be very challenging. This can also replace the need to have detailed labels on each container.

7. Be Strategic With How You Pack And Store Garments

If your winter garments won’t fit into one or two containers, then take the time to be strategic with your packing. Try to group certain items, like winter coats, gloves, scarves, or true winter clothes, in one container. 

You can then pack transition season clothes, like wool sweaters and corduroy pants, in another. This allows you to break out your cold-weather clothes one box at a time, as the temperatures gradually decrease.

8. Keep Clothes Containers Off The Ground

As a rule, you should never keep your clothing containers on the ground. Instead, always keep them elevated on a shelf or a pallet. This will help with water damage and also reduce the risk of pests.

Keeping clothing elevated can even reduce the amount of extreme temperature fluctuations, since the ground often experiences greater temperature variations than the air.

9. Use Fragrant Sachets To Keep Clothes Smelling Fresh

If your clothes often smell stale or slightly funky when you take them out of storage, then start adding fragrant and natural sachets to each container moving forward. This will add a light aroma to the air in the container and keep your clothes smelling fresh.

Using sachets of lavender is a great option. This is a soothing smell, and it can also help ward off several pests in the process.

10. Use Cedar Chips To Keep Pests Away

Another fresh-smelling way to keep pests away is cedar chips. Cedar has a nostalgic fragrance for humans, but it repels many insects, including the kind that like to eat clothes. Keep these chips in sachets or mesh containers to help ward off any unwelcome visitors when your clothes are in storage.

11. Keep Clothes Away From Sunlight

In addition to finding a cool and dry place for your winter clothes, you should also keep all these garments out of direct sunlight. This is especially true if you aren’t storing them in thick plastic containers. 

UV rays can break down fabrics, and it will quickly alter the colors of many dyes. It’s best to keep your clothes in a dark space like a storage closet to ensure sunlight doesn’t damage your clothes. 

12. Store More Expensive, Fragile Winter Garments Separately

If you have an expensive or heirloom winter garment like a fur coat or designer jacket, consider storing it separately. To preserve your most expensive clothing, keep it hung on a quality hanger and inside a garment bag. Your best winter garments should be given a little extra TLC to ensure they last as long as possible.

13. If Moths Are A Concern, Use Mothballs

Mothballs aren’t always ideal, as they can leave a specific and undesirable smell on your clothes. They are, however, very effective at keeping moths away. If you live somewhere where moths are known to eat clothing, then consider using mothballs. To help keep the mothball smell away, place clothing in sealed bags and keep the mothballs outside the bags. This will deter moths but also prevent your clothes from smelling like mothballs.

Wrapping Up How To Properly Store Your Winter Clothes

If you live somewhere with four distinct seasons, then you are no stranger to swapping out your wardrobe seasonally. Storing winter clothes is a part of life that can feel routine, but there are some important things you should remember as you store these items each year. 

Use an airtight container, and store your winter clothes in a cool, dry place out of the sun. Keep sachets and cedar chips in the container to keep pests away and keep your clothes smelling great. Wash and dry all your garments before storing them, and always leave detailed labels or photos of what's inside each container to make it easy to find garments when you need them.

Related Guides:

• Tips To Store Your Seasonal Clothing
• Clever Ways To Store Clothes Without A Closet
• How To Build A Cedar Closet In A Basement (Do This!)