What kind of stuff is OK to leave in an unconditioned garage

Factual Questions
1

Been on a binge redoing all the storage areas, and am wondering what kind of stuff is or is not OK to leave in an unheated Midwestern garage long term, or what needs to be stored in the house, it can get well below zero in the winter, probably above a 100 degrees and humid in the rafters in the summer.

Electrical wire- spools of various types of Romex, ethernet, lamp cord wire
Bicycle Helmets
Life Vests
Sports balls
Electronics like radios and whatnot
Holiday Village stuff- some of it is has some simple LED lights and motors
Screwdrivers, wrenches, hand tools
Power tools- Shop Vacs, chain saws, electric drills, circular saws
Skateboards, kick scooters, Rollerblades

2

All of that stuff will be ok for a while. It’s not so much the temperature as the humidity. Moisture causes corrosion in metal and can rot wood. Plastic is less harmed by water but dry air can cause plastic to degrade faster and wood to dry excessively. But high humidity is much more of a problem than low. Keeping objects in plastic bags and with desiccant packs in them will reduce humidity issues.

The last thing is bugs and critters. Mice seem to love Romex and will eat other plastics. If there’s any fabric on the life vests they’ll pick at it for nesting material. And bugs can get into anything.

3

Yeah. If you live where it gets humid, anything with fabric or organic content will be moldy after a single season or maybe a couple years. Storing the stuff in airtight plastic tubs will slow, but not stop, the process.

My general view is that if I can’t stand to replace it, don’t put it in unconditioned storage. Said another way, everything that goes into unconditioned storage is sacrificial. You might get lucky and use it before it’s destroyed, but you might not.

4

Yeah, everything from power tools to clothing will degrade in unconditioned storage. I keep lots of stuff there, due to lack of space, but nothing really valuable, and with no expectation of keeping anything intact.

5

My garage is unheated but it is attached to the side of my house, so it shares one heated wall. Its enough to keep it just above freezing in the coldest days of winter. I know because I keep water and other drinks out there and they get nice and cold, but never frozen.

6

I live in the pacific NW and we have a detached, uninsulated garage. I’ve had plenty of stuff in there for 20 years with no ill effects. I don’t store things in there that shouldn’t be hit with extreme heat or cold like cans of paint and wood finishes as well as the lithium batteries for my cordless tools (not sure that is required, but I have a good spot in the basement for them, along with the paint/finishes). But, nearly everything else has been fine in there. Extreme temps, but never humid. Mold and rust is not an issue. I do store most of my outdoor stuff in big plastic tubs, but that is mainly to keep dust/sawdust off them since it is also my wood shop. Bikes and motos are all in there, all the time.

I have had a mouse or two in there over winter, so I always keep a loaded mousetrap in there. But, no damage from the couple that did get in.

7

Electrical wire- spools of various types of Romex, ethernet, lamp cord wire

The ends of the wire will corrode, but all you need to do is cut off the last inch or so of the wire (whatever metal is exposed to the air, plus a little bit) and you’re good. I assume your ethernet cable is on a spool and doesn’t already have the ends attached. If the ends are attached then the connectors will get ruined.

Bicycle Helmets
Life Vests
Sports balls

No biggie, in my experience. If the life vest has metal bits instead of plastic latches, the metal will rust. It will just be surface rust so the vest will still probably be usable.

Electronics like radios and whatnot

Will get completely trashed in a few years.

Holiday Village stuff- some of it is has some simple LED lights and motors

If it’s sealed in boxes then it might be ok. If the houses and such (especially the lights and motors) are exposed to air then the metal bits will corrode.

Screwdrivers, wrenches, hand tools

You might get a little surface rust, but generally no biggie. Pliers, dikes, adjustable wrenches, etc. might eventually have some issues.

Power tools- Shop Vacs, chain saws, electric drills, circular saws

I haven’t had a motor fail, but my power tools ended up with some pretty bad surface rust after 20 years. I’ve been replacing a lot of them lately. My circular saw and table saw still worked fine but I gave them to one of my sons anyway (sometimes you just want an excuse to buy newer and fancier tools). My drill press was still functional but could no longer be rotated or raised and lowered due to rust on the column. My 50 year old jigsaw still works.

If the chain saw gets reasonably regular use then it should be ok, though I have had issues with the oil feed for the chain getting gummed up if mine have been sitting for too long.

My shop vac stays in my basement, which is heated.

Skateboards, kick scooters, Rollerblades

If they are used every once in a while then they’ll be ok. If they sit then the wheel bearings can rust.

8

Same here. The garage makes a great fridge in the winter for cooling down hot leftovers before they’re refrigerated, and a great place for keeping bottled water and soft drinks in the winter.

As for the general question, it depends very much on the climate in your geography. Around here, while it sometimes gets humid in the summer, it’s never extreme enough or persistent enough to cause mold problems. My general rule of thumb is to not store beverages in the garage in the summer because they may deteriorate (diet soft drinks*) or grow bacteria (bottled water) in the heat (although it’s great in the winter) and for the same reason I keep chemicals like herbicides in the basement and not the garage. But other than that, I generally don’t worry about other stuff in the garage, but there’s not much there of value. My tools – power and otherwise – are all kept in the basement.

* We had another thread somewhere discussing how artificial sweeteners degrade surprisingly quickly, so that best-by dates on diet soft drinks are actually important. Those would be my #1 item to NEVER store in a hot garage.

9

The biggest problem will be the stuff you get out today that you put away 3 years ago for just 2 weeks.

10

Thanks for the advice.

My tween / teenage relatives and their family come up from Florida to stay with us fo ra couple of weeks every summer. We have spare riding helmets / kick scooters / bicycles / basketballs and stuff for them to use when they visit so they don’t have to pack their own but otherwise the stuff doesn’t get used. Our own bicycles have aluminum frames, and then we just make sure the chain stays oiled, but the spares are presumably just steel.

The Holiday Village stuff, the houses are in an unsealed plastic bag, then surrounded by two pieces of styrofoam and in a cardboard box. Presumably not completely airtight but close. Because of the bulk a lot of villagers don’t really have an option but to store them in the garage. Some of the villagers have been discussing this topic, with some saying the motors rust and the grease dries up, while others saying they’ve kept their pieces in a garage for decades with no damage.

Romex- My thought was the humidity might cause the paper lining to deteriorate, but on the other hand the garage is full of Romex from when I wired it over 20 years ago, and there’s still no apparent damage to it when I replaced a switch last summer. The garage is in fact host to mice (much to the delight of the neighbor’s indoor / outdoor cat) but they haven’t bothered the installed stuff. Some of the Romex my stepfather has is trashed, but he kept it actually outdoors and for all I know it actually got rained on.

11

My garage is insulated (welcome to the north) and shares a wall with the house, but no heating. However between engine heat and the house leakage, there is enough heat that the snow buildup on the cars will melt and water accumulation is a big problem - I get big puddles under the cars and have to shop-vac the water out once orr twice a winter.

This results in high humidity, so cheap tools and other rust-prone items are prone to turning brown. But generally, things like my bicycles, power tools, etc. are failr immune from problems, and folded cloth deck chairs and patio umbrella don’t seem to suffer.

12

I don’t have a problem with humidity in the garage, but you may live in an area that gets a lot more snowfall than here in southern Ontario. It may also be partly due to the fact that I avoid going out in bad weather whenever possible. But when I garage the car when it’s either got slush in the wheel wells or has been snowed on or rained on, it generally dries off surprisingly fast, even in cool winter weather. My biggest problem is that winter slush tends to bring in salty sandy residue on the garage floor that has to be pressure-sprayed away every spring.

13

Attached garage in SE Michigan, I’ve had a radio out there for 17 years now, and it still works fine.

14

Humidity in the Northern cold and in the Southern heat are two different things. Both are highly rust-ogenic on metal. But only humidity plus heat are highly mold-ogenic on fabric or other organics.


How often do you change the tuning or volume? And is the radio old enough those are mechanical controls, or are they buttons that control a computer?

For an old fashioned fully analog radio with a potentiometer for a volume knob and a variable tuning inductor & capacitor for frequency selection I’d expect using the controls would produce a lot of dead spots, pops, clicks, and general funky-ness. But it’d work fine if untouched.

A more modern fully computerized radio would be fine until/unless one of the volume up/down or tuning up/down buttons simply quit working due to accumulated crud in it.