How Long Can You Store Furniture Safely? DC & Fairfax Guide
Furniture can be stored safely for years when it’s kept in climate-controlled conditions and prepared properly before it goes in. Damage isn’t about how long you leave something in storage, but about exposing your pieces to temperature and humidity swings.
If your furniture is going into storage and you’re unsure when you’ll get it back, the worry is usually that there’s a point where storage starts doing harm. There isn’t one. Furniture stores well for years and can come out looking the way it went in. At Georgetown Moving and Storage, we’ve held furniture for families across DC and Fairfax through assignments abroad that ran several years. What keeps your furniture in good condition are the storage conditions.
The Real Threat Is The Air Around Your Furniture
The biggest threat to your furniture is not time; it’s change. Wood acts like a slow-motion sponge, absorbing moisture from humid air and giving it back when things dry out. In optimal conditions, a wood piece can look great indefinitely, which is how 200-year-old pieces survive in museums. However, if you leave wood furniture in an unprotected garage for just one season, you’ll start to see damage.
In the DMV area, hot and humid summers and cold winters are unforgiving on furniture. Whether you have wood, fabric, or leather furniture, it will not withstand direct exposure. That is why it’s almost impossible to preserve your belongings in a garage or standard storage unit. Without the type of climate control your house provides, your pieces are exposed to moisture and temperatures they cannot tolerate.
Over time, being exposed to DMV weather conditions will invite mold and mildew. Seams will start to split, and wood will dry out and start to crack.
Some of Your Pieces Are More Vulnerable Than Others
You may be surprised to learn that not all furniture is equally vulnerable to temperature and humidity swings.
While wood needs protection, solid wood is more durable than most people expect. It can move with the seasons and settle back. It will decay if it’s exposed to extreme swings over years, but it can endure in the short term. Solid wood antiques are the exception because older joinery and hide glue were built for the inside of a house.
However, solid wood is less common these days. Veneer and engineered wood, which is most of the furniture you can buy, absorb moisture and will not settle back. Particleboard swells permanently, and veneer lifts off and bubbles across the surface. Once it’s been damaged, you cannot just sand it down and refinish like you might be able to with a solid oak table.
Leather and upholstery of all types demand careful climate control, because any about of damp air will eventually result in mold and mildew. Dry air can also cause leather to crack, which cannot be reversed.
Other parts of your furniture can endure harsh conditions for a while but will break down with only extended exposure. For example, foam cushioning breaks down gradually in heat, and metal hardware corrodes in humid air and can stain the wood around it. Mattresses slowly absorb moisture, but will also compress under whatever you or your movers put on top of them. These are the elements that can endure short storage almost anywhere, but will be unrecognizable if you leave them exposed too long.
In addition to weather exposure, you want to prevent your most valuable and important piece from being scuffed or dented. We offer custom crating for rigid protection on those items you’d struggle to replace.
What to Do Before Pickup to Protect Your Furniture in Storage
In addition to choosing a secure, climate controlled storage facility for your furniture, you get the best results when you prepare it properly before you put it in storage.
Any issues with your furniture at the time you wrap and put it away will continue as its stored. For example, if you put a damp cushion into storage and wrap the couch or chair in plastic, you are creating conditions where mold can thrive. You want everything to be dry before the movers come to wrap and take it away.
You also want everything to be clean. Tiny specs of food on your dining room chairs can attract tiny pests. A stain in your armchair might lift off today, but after 18 months of storage, it can be set so well it’s impossible to remove. Similarly, you want to give your wood a good polish to add a moisture barrier before putting it into storage so it’s in the best possible condition when you retrieve it.
Once everything is dry, clean, and polished, you want to be careful about how you cover it. Moving blankets and fabric covers protect your furniture from dust and dings while allowing air to move through. That circulation is good because it stops moisture from settling. Avoid plastic sheeting directly against your furniture. It can be used around the blankets to keep them in place, but when you wrap furniture directly in plastic, you trap humidity against the finish.
You can disassemble larger pieces; just make sure to save your hardware in a bag that you attach to the piece. Otherwise, when you go to assemble later, you’ll be looking at an exhausting puzzle. Taking large pieces apart relieves joint stress and saves space.
If this sounds like way too much to do in the time you have, we offer full-service packing. We’ll pack up your whole home or just the hardest rooms and bring all the materials you need. When we pick your stuff up to transport to our climate-controlled storage facilities, we always bring the blankets you need to cover your furniture.
Full Service, Climate-Controlled Furniture Storage
Whether you’re storing a few pieces while you renovate or everything you own while you’re posted overseas, you want to know that you’ll come back and find everything in good condition.
We not only have secure and climate-controlled facilities you can count on, but every member of our team passes a comprehensive background check before handling a single piece of your furniture. We’re a six-time winner of the Angie’s List Super Service Award with an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, and we’ve spent more than 20 years storing furniture for families across Fairfax, DC, and the surrounding area.
Call us at (703) 889-8899 or request a free estimate online. Your furniture will be waiting when you get back.
