How to Properly Store Your Winter Clothing

As the winter months pass, and the weather changes to spring, it's time to change the wardrobe in your closet. It's time to pack away clothing items such as heavy wool sweaters, long twill pants, and turtle neck shirts. However, storing your winter clothing is more than just moving it from your main closet to another closet, or to cardboard boxes. In order to protect your clothing investment and keep them looking new, it takes a little time and effort.

First off, make sure that your winter clothing is clean. It's common for some people to wear a shirt or dress more than once before they dry clean it. While this practice is fine, you may forget that you've worn an article of clothing once already. You may assume that it's completely clean. So, you'll need to inspect your wardrobe; look for stains. Some stains, such as underarm perspiration spots, can really be hard to detect. Perspiration stains can become permanent if the clothing they are on are stored away for a season. Not only that, but stains that contain sugary or oily substances can easily become permanent as well. They can also draw unwanted pests into your storage area.

Be sure you read and follow the care labels in each item of clothing to find out what cleaning method the manufacturers recommend.

Personally, when I inspect my winter wardrobe before I store it away, if I'm in doubt whether an item is 100% clean or not, I launder it anyway just to be safe. I guess I'd rather be "safe than sorry". Next fall when I unpack my winter clothing for the season, I don't want to be surprised by what I could find if an item was dirty.

Next, you should have two places where you store your winter clothing. One should be a "hanging" place like a closet. The other place should be either a dresser or a chest of drawers. If you don't have spare drawers, you can also use cardboard boxes to put your winter wardrobe in. Some of your clothing needs to be hung up, while the rest should be folded up and put in a drawer or a box that has first been lined with white, acid-free tissue paper.