Five Tips On How To Store Your Handbag With Care

Giving your luxury handbag a vacation from wearing and flaunting is not as simple as stashing the item in a chest and letting it out once you feel like using the bag again. Your handbag is an accessory, not a toy. The process of storing handbags requires great care. Check out the following tips you can follow to give your handbag a longer shelf life.

1. Empty your handbag as you would the trash. Specifically ditch papers, tissue, leftover food, candy bar wrappers and half-empty, half-full drinking bottles. Paper and tissue can attract moths. Leftover food and candy bar wrappers can tell ants and rodents to come hither. Drinking bottles, when perforated, can wet your handbag, effect stains and possibly a smell that stinks to the high heavens. The least you can do is to make your luxury piece as uninviting as possible for insects and untoward incidents.

2. If your handbag has detachable straps, detach them. Otherwise, carefully arrange the straps so that they will not be cruelly twisted and distorted. Wrap the straps in soft cloth – whether these are made of metal, leather or cloth and tie securely but not too tightly with a ribbon. Wrapping will prevent a number of unwanted mishaps: staining and imprint creation against the handbag, especially when the strap presses against or rests on the body of the handbag.

3. Pick the right bag to stash your handbag in. If you've heard about “a story within a story,” then you're not an alien to this tip. The storage bag will protect your handbag from the onset of dust as well as possible infestation by nasty creatures such as cockroaches, insects and rodents. The ideal choice is one made of fabric, typically silk or cotton, which allows your bag to breathe while it is being stored in the dark. Plastic can somewhat make your bag waterproof but is not advisable to use for storing leather bags, as the plastic can speed up the cracking of leather and leatherette.

4. Select a cool, smooth dry place to keep your bag of a handbag in. Don't think of just stashing your treasure on top of your dressing table, inside your kitchen cupboard or chiller, or even inside your washing machine tub. The safest and most likely place to store that bag is inside your closet. Make sure the innards of your closet are free of rough edges and splinters.

5. Always let the bag rest on top of the pile of things inside your closet. If the bag stays at the bottom, it will have to bear the entire weight of the pile and you don't want this to happen. Do not also hang the bag by the strap. The effect is a well-preserved and pressed, but deformed handbag that has lost its shape and aesthetic appeal.

No matter what kind of handbag you own, apply these general tips. They aren't difficult to remember: clean; put inside a bag; store inside your closet. Treat your bag with care when storing, it can extend its shelf life to a period that you truly will appreciate.