The most important thing you can do to safe guard your slides and negatives is to store them in a stable, cool, and dry environment. Spaces with high temperatures and humidity or fluctuating conditions, like most attics and basements, are unsuitable for long-term safekeeping. If you are unable to store your materials under ideal environmental conditions, (68ºF & 40% relative humidity), incremental improvements can still be beneficial. Simply moving items from an attic with 85ºF and 80%RH to a room that has 75ºF and 60%RH conditions can increase the life of your slides by 3½ times. If you must store them in the basement or attic, place and secure the items in plastic tubs or bins along with Silica Gel packages to absorb any moisture.

The best way to store your slides are in plastic archival pages or metal slide boxes. These clear plastic pages have room for 20 slides each. Most are punched for 3-Ring binders and hanging file bars. The big advantage here is that you can organize similar slides on each page, and the pages can likewise be organized into hanging file boxes complete with index tabs for easy location. When you pull out a page you can instantly see 20 slides at once (which is a lot faster than going through them one by one). Be sure that the slide pages you get are PVC free. Some cheap pages are made with PVC vinyl which gives off gases that can damage film. You can also use metal slide boxes which store on average 200 to 750 slides per box. They stack very nicely and will protect your slides from UV exposure and dust.

No mater which system you use, be sure the pages, boxes, or binders are stored away from the risk of water damage. It would be a pity if a pipe would break and flood your office and ruin hundreds of slides. Besides water, you need to guard against humidity, which can warp cardboard slide mounts and allow fungus to grow.

Finally, light and heat will cause you slides to degrade over time. You can avoid this by not projecting them and by keeping them in dark places. Kodachrome slides are supposed to last around 50 years. I have some of my grandfather's slides which are that old. Some have faded more than other (mostly to the red spectrum) but overall they look pretty good.

Ultimately you should consider creating a digital archive of your slides for the best protection, which we would be more than happy to help you with.

Blog - How Should I Store My Slides?