Recently I read about a gal on a scrapbook message board that had an album/scrapbooking related disaster and it got me thinking about it.
She had stored her albums in a cardboard box in a garage at her parents’ house. Well, eventually the garage leaked, she moved boxes but threw a tarp over the box. Somehow the box wasn’t covered by the tarp and when she opened the box up the albums were ruined. Mold and mildew was everywhere.
She obviously devastated as the hard work and money that had gone into those albums was destroyed. I believe she was able to salvage a few photos but that was it. She even said there were bugs crawling all through the albums. I’m sure that it was not only disgusting but utterly gut wrenching. I cannot imagine and my heart goes out to her.
So I started thinking about several things. First and foremost, the garage is not a safe place to store anything of real value. Between heat, moisture and humidity – it’s a breeding ground for problems. So obviously my advice is to never store your albums in the garage. Period.
However, the other mistake I think she made, was storing them in a cardboard box. I have had experience and good luck storing my albums in Rubbermaid containers. They seal the moisture out, they might not be able to do much about the heat, but they do keep things dry and dust and bug free.
Since I’ve learned about her catastrophe, I’ve taken another measure. I’ve begun scanning all the layouts that I’ve done. I know many scrapbookers already do this, but I had not. So now, I have a folder on my computer for each album I’ve created to date and a scanned photo of each page in the folder.
If anything ever happens to my albums or layouts, at least I have those. I can get those printed out and although they are not the real layouts, at least I’d have something. Besides that, I could also recreate the layouts if I have the negatives and can find the papers or supplies that I used. I have a photograph of the original layout to be a guide.
So my advice to all of you is, really think about where you are storing your scrapbooking albums, supplies, photographs and negatives. It’s more important than you realize.
My heart still goes out to this girl, I cannot imagine losing my years of hard work, not to mention the money that went into it.
Stay safe!