Where to Store Tapes and Film at Home: A Practical Guide

Short answer: store tapes and film where you yourself are comfortable living — inside the conditioned part of the home, in a closet against an interior wall, on a shelf rather than the floor, in a closed box, with the tapes standing upright like books. The three places almost everyone uses — the attic crawlspace, the storeroom and the balcony — are the three worst in a hot Mediterranean climate. And even flawless storage does not stop the clock. It only slows it. The clock is stopped by one thing: a backed-up digital file.

We see the proof most weeks: two boxes from the same family, the same years, the same tape brand. One sat in a bedroom closet, the other in the crawlspace. The first goes on the machine and plays. The second sticks, squeals, and sometimes refuses to move at all. The difference was never the original quality of the tape — it was a few degrees and a few percent of humidity, multiplied by every season since.

Why are the crawlspace and the storeroom the silent killers?

Because they do not look dangerous. They feel dry, they are enclosed, and the damage does not show up the next day — it shows up a decade later, when someone finally goes looking for their parents' wedding. Both violate the principle every preservation body repeats: cool, dry and stable. Their worst violation is the third word.

• The crawlspace is the hot spot: hot air rises, and overhead storage sits directly under the ceiling — on a top floor, directly under a roof baking in the sun. Even when the living room is pleasant, the air in a closed compartment does not exchange and heat accumulates. Not an event, a recurring state, every summer.
• The storeroom is the wet spot: a ground-floor, basement or parking-level locker lives on humidity cycling — cool and damp in winter, stifling in summer, with no climate control. Add plumbing in the wall, a water heater, air-conditioning drains, and every few years a small flood nobody mentions.
• Both of them cycle, which is the real point: the IASA guidelines (TC-05, on handling and storage of audio and video carriers) and Library of Congress care guidance both stress that the stability of conditions matters as much as their absolute value. Material at a moderate but constant temperature outlives material that climbs and drops daily and seasonally.
• And nobody opens a box there: a box in the living-room closet gets seen occasionally; a box in the crawlspace once a decade. Mould that has started, a sour smell, softened cardboard — all get years of quiet before anyone notices.

What actually destroys a tape or a film — heat, humidity or fluctuation?

All three, each in its own way, and each carrier has a different weak point.

• The binder in magnetic tape: the polymer holding the magnetic particles to the plastic backing absorbs moisture. Under sustained humidity it hydrolyses and softens. The result is sticky-shed: the tape adheres to itself and to the heads, squeals and sheds debris. This is exactly when a casual playback "just to see" becomes irreversible damage.
• Mould: prolonged damp with no air movement is an open invitation. Mould is not just a stain — it grips the tape surface, spreads between the wound layers, and contaminates every machine that plays the tape afterwards. Do not wipe or dry it yourself.
• Vinegar syndrome in acetate film: acetate base decays and releases acetic acid, the sour smell you meet when opening an old can. It is strongly accelerated by heat and humidity, and it is autocatalytic — the decay products speed up further decay. A reel that has started to smell does not go back, and sealed in with healthy reels it drags them along. More in our guide to the vinegar smell coming off your reels.
• Magnetism: tape stores information as a magnetic field. Loudspeakers, motors, transformers and strong magnets are the neighbours to avoid — and avoiding them is free.
• Light and dust: direct sun causes local heating and fading, and dust between the layers acts as a fine abrasive the moment the tape moves.

All of these are time-dependent and cumulative. So the storage question is really one question: how much time are you buying before you do the one thing that halts the process.

Where in a normal apartment should you store them, and where not?

The simplest rule, worth remembering even if you forget everything else: if the place is comfortable for a person, it is comfortable for a tape. No dedicated cabinet, no equipment — a climate-controlled room, an interior wall, and a shelf.

Place in the home	Suitable?	Why
Interior closet in a bedroom or hallway, inner wall	Best	Shares the room's climate, shielded from sun, relatively stable year-round
Bookshelf in the living room, away from the window	Good	Same logic, if there is no direct sun and no heat-producing electronics nearby
Windowless interior concrete room (safe room, inner utility room)	Usually good	Thick walls, no sun, stable temperature — provided there is no damp and the box is off the floor
Suitcase or crate under the bed	Conditional	Good room climate, but tapes lie flat and collect dust — better closed and upright
Closet on an exterior wall or backing onto a shower	Conditional	Exterior walls heat and sweat; a wet wall pushes moisture into the closet
Attic crawlspace or overhead compartment	No	Hottest volume in the house, no air exchange, directly under the roof
Storeroom, basement or parking-level locker	No	Seasonal humidity cycling, no climate control, plumbing, pests, flood risk
Service or covered balcony	No	Extreme day-night swings, humidity, dust and indirect light
Garage or carport	No	Temperature swings, chemical fumes, dust and damp
Beside a fridge, air conditioner, boiler, oven or washing machine	No	Local heat, vibration, condensation and magnetic fields from motors
Household freezer or fridge	No	Condensation forms going in and coming out; never freeze magnetic tape at home

Two notes that come up every time. Do not put boxes directly on the floor, not even in a good room — a burst boiler destroys the bottom row first. And do not push the box flush against a wall; a small gap lets air move and prevents a pocket of damp behind it.

How should the tapes themselves sit on the shelf?

This part takes half an hour and matters more than people expect. It matches standard practice in audio and video archives, including Library of Congress care recommendations and the IASA documents.

• Upright, like books: lying flat for years puts uneven weight on the pack and can deform the tape edge. Standing on end transfers the load through the hub, which is what the hub is for.
• Every tape in its own case: the original case, however ugly, is an excellent barrier against dust, light and handling. If it cracked, replace it with another case — not a plastic bag.
• Closed, but not hermetically sealed: a lid keeps dust out; a fully airtight container can trap moisture already inside. If the box came from somewhere damp, let it acclimatise in a conditioned room for a day or two first.
• Acid-free materials: for labels, dividers and wrapping. Cheap board yellows, turns acidic, and passes that on.
• Away from magnetic fields: not on the fridge, not on a subwoofer, not above a transformer, not in the electrical cabinet.
• Do not play them "just to check": the most common mistake. A tape stored for years in unknown conditions is at its highest risk on the first pass. If it matters, make the first playback the one being captured.
• Label them now: year, event, who is in frame. In a decade that is worth more than the tape, and the person who knows is in the house today.

As for how long any of this is supposed to last, it depends on format and conditions — covered in our guide to how many years video tapes really last. Good storage moves the number forward; it does not make it infinite.

What about 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm film?

Film is a different animal from magnetic tape, and it is the one that can survive most beautifully or fail most unpleasantly — the variable is storage. The film preservation bodies, among them the NFPF and FIAF, and Kodak's technical publications on storing processed film, repeat one bottom line: cool, dry storage is the intervention that genuinely slows acetate decay.

• The can — yes, but with air: unlike tape, acetate film does not benefit from a fully airtight container over years, because the acid it releases stays inside and accelerates decay. Some air exchange beats hermetic sealing.
• Isolate anything that already smells: a sour-smelling reel comes out of the shared box. It is not contagious biologically, but its vapours act on its neighbours.
• Low stacks: reels in cans are normally stored lying flat in low stacks, not tall columns that press down. Reels on bare cores belong in a closed, dust-proof box.
• Splices dry out: the joins in a home reel were made decades ago; heat and extreme dryness dry them out and they let go mid-run. One more reason not to project old film before scanning.
• No plastic bags: cheap polythene traps moisture and can off-gas. If you need packaging, use preservation-grade materials.

How long 8mm film actually survives is covered in our guide to how long 8mm film lasts. In the studio we scan on a Filmfabriek Muller HDS+, frame by frame, with no projector and no sprocket dragging the film through by force — the difference between a reel that comes out whole and one that comes out torn.

How do you store slides, negatives and prints?

Same logic, with one addition: what touches the image matters as much as the air around it.

• Acid-free sleeves, not PVC: purpose-made sleeves for negatives and slides use stable materials. Cheap PVC releases compounds over time and sticks to the emulsion in heat.
• Self-adhesive albums are a trap: the "magnetic" albums with a tacky page under clear film glue the print down and yellow it. If prints still lift off easily, move them now.
• Slide trays: old carousel trays collect dust and moisture. A closed box on an interior shelf is better.
• Water and light: paper is the first casualty of any flood, so shelf height, not floor. And a print hanging opposite a window fades — scan the original, hang the copy.

Why does even perfect storage only slow the clock?

Because all of this is pace management, not a stop. The binder keeps ageing in a climate-controlled closet, acetate keeps decaying even when cool, and the machines that can still read these carriers keep disappearing. Good storage buys you years, and it genuinely does buy them — but it does not convert the content into something that can be copied without loss. That is the difference between preserving and postponing.

Once the content is a file, the rules invert: it can be copied with no generation loss, sent to siblings abroad, searched, and kept in several places at once. Hence our standing recommendation after scanning, 3-2-1: three copies, on two kinds of media, with one copy outside the house. A single external drive in the same closet as the tapes is not a backup — it is one more carrier that burns in the same fire.

If you have a large pile, do not wait for the mythical free weekend. Start with what cannot be re-shot: people who are no longer here, children who have grown, one-time events. Store the rest properly per this guide and work in batches. We have run more than 5,000,000 frames and photographs through the studio, and it almost always turns out the box that looked least important holds the everyday moments nobody ever filmed again. What each service includes is on the video tape conversion page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a windowless interior concrete room a good place to store tapes?

Usually yes, and it is often the best spot in an apartment: thick walls, no window and no direct sun, so the temperature stays relatively stable. The conditions are that there is no damp or condensation, and that the box sits on a shelf rather than on the floor. If that room has become a crammed storeroom that never gets opened and smells musty, it is no longer an interior room for our purposes — it is a storeroom.

Should I fast-forward and rewind a tape occasionally to "refresh" it?

Not at home. Periodic re-winding exists as an archival practice, but it is done on maintained equipment by people who can recognise a weakened tape. A tape stored for years in unknown conditions is at its highest risk on that first pass, and a home VCR or old projector can stretch, tear or stick it. If it is going to run once, make that the run during which it is captured to digital.

My tapes sat for years in the attic crawlspace. Are they lost?

Not necessarily. A large share of the material that reaches us from crawlspaces and storerooms is recoverable, sometimes completely. What is true is that the odds drop the longer you wait and the handling gets more complex. Do not try to clean it, dry it with a hairdryer or open the shell yourself. Move the box into a climate-controlled part of the house, do not play the tapes, and let us look.

Can I put tapes in the freezer to stop time?

No. Never freeze magnetic tape at home. Freezing condenses water on the carrier going in and coming out, makes different layers contract and expand at different rates, and can do more harm than whatever you were trying to prevent. Deep cold is a real archival tool for certain materials under tightly controlled conditions, and it is not a job for the kitchen freezer.