Just spent an hour moving what seems to be n enormous number of hifi boxes around my loft - my study is up there and until today I hadn’t put away any of the new boxes from the last 15 months of acquisitions into the eaves storage areas. Now jolly hot and bothered - and aching a bit as some of the gaps are a bit smaller than a chap like me is made for climbing in and out of. Pleased to get the SL2 boxes into a Space I wasn’t sure of accessing. Have made sure the lp12 box is accessible but apart from that there are firm plans never to upgrade anything again (well, not after tomorrow anyway) as the SL2s are staying long term … well in ten years maybe
I do have loads of space in the garage but that isn’t properly dry. Does anyone have any solutions for dry storage of their boxes out of the house?
I keep mine in the loft, its a pain, but elsewhere we get mice in the garage and they tend to chew their way through things. So if you do store elsewhere it needs to be vermin proof.
You’re quite right - so there are two things to watch out for. Mice and damp. We get both in the garage, and occasionally mice in the house. So some kind of (very) large plastic box that is properly watertight / airtight would work. I was just wondering if anyone had found anything to work in their garage
I have a garage with usable boarded loft space, the garage roof is well sealed so it stays dry, and mice haven’t found there way into the loft space. So it holds a lot of hifi boxes.
I cleared out my loft space a few years ago, objective was to both completely empty everything & install all new 400mm insulation depth)
After which I built in some simple wood cross beams across the rafter struts to place the boxes on & keep them off the insulation & in free air.
All I have in the space now is the hifi boxes, FM & TV aerials, & two water tanks.
Proper Job
You could flat pack the boxes and wrap them in plastic, when you sell anything just buy a roll of clear parcel tape (this tape has thin string stuff inside to give it strength. Poly or foam inserts would not be an issue with damp but again could get labelled, wrapped and stacked.
The speaker boxes were the size of medium sized coffins, so in conjunction with the dealer and the manufacturer the boxes were returned to the factory in Sheffield. As that was in 2005 I suspect that everyone involved has forgotten about that so come the great moving day I guess there will be three coffin sized boxes to be removed from the house. Plus the 6 standard sized boxes plus the large sized box.
and then there is the collection of boxes for Macs - Pro to i to Mini to Book Pros, 4 or so phone boxes etc and then there is the camera and lens collection boxes.
On that note I have created a spreadsheet on my house shared folder containing a list of the “more expensive than you might think” items in the house, which is pointed to in my will. I hate to think of the Naim gear, the Roksan, the speakers being chucked out because my executors don’t know. Similarly the few wines I have which have appreciated massively since I bought them and so on my nieces and nephews aren’t going to retire on the proceeds, but it’d be a shame for it all to be missed.
We would like to do that but we have boxes and boxes of stuff up there belonging to my two grownup daughters. My wife said to one of them recently that she wanted it moved and the reply was “Oh don’t worry mum. We will sort it all out after you are dead!”
Best
We have the same issues, apart from my hi fi we have art and objects that our kids have no idea of there worth. Like you I’m scared they’ll just “ chuck” them out when we’re gone. A list is a great idea.
We had the beneficiaries visit a few weekends ago - showed them some the “treasures” not a flicker of interest. I am tempted to not even show them a flicker of interrest…
My mum had another approach which also served to direct items to particular people. On the back she would stick a label with “for David” or whoever on it. I future-bagged a painting that way at least ten years before she died and it’s on my wall now, still with her label on the back, as part of its provenance.
But these things don’t always work. In clearing mum’s house after she died I found a pretty watercolour in a tatty frame. So I got it reframed, but before I did that I took the painting out of the old frame and found it was painted on card and on the reverse it said: “to (my maternal great grandfather) with grateful thanks from the artist”.
Unfortunately neither the dedication nor the painting were signed, so so I don’t know who painted it or why he/she was grateful…
Anyway that painting is also on my wall complete with its dedication hidden away for someone else to find one day.
Love it, I should have added that all my loft/roof space clearance was only possible after my daughter got married, not so much that she (& her brothers) had stuff in the loft, its just that they never actually vacated their bedrooms.
