Storing These 24 Common Things In Your Garage Is A Big Mistake

You might think your garage is an ideal storage spot for items you don't use often or don't want in the house. Typically, garages are only insulated on the wall that connects them to a living space, making them hot in the summer, chilly in the winter, and damp in areas and seasons with high humidity. Some items, like paint, wine, and your spare refrigerator, don't do well in this non-climate controlled space. Other items pose a health hazard (like your propane tank or your lawnmower with its engine that takes too long to cool down), while others simply take up too much space — looking at you, broken down delivery boxes.

Garage walls, doors, and windows generally aren't as well sealed as your home, meaning pests can get in more easily. Mice and rats will nibble through the bags of dry pet food or bird feeder seed sitting on garage storage shelves, and termites or carpenter ants may find their way into poorly treated wooden furniture. Silverfish will quickly invade and deteriorate old books or photographs, not to mention the damage mold does to them. Leaving these items out of your garage saves effort, time, and money. You won't need to throw away, clean, or declutter your garage by tossing commonly stored items if they're not there in the first place. Most of the items listed below can be stored in the house or in a climate controlled off-site storage facility while other items — think lawnmowers, propane tanks, and firewood — may be better off in your garden shed.

While not storing fresh or packaged food in your garage might be an obvious choice, homeowners with pantry overflow may be tempted to store extra canned food in their garage. Resist the temptation! An uninsulated garage is prone to extreme temperature fluctuations, especially if you live somewhere that gets particularly cold in the winter or hot in the summer. Frozen (and frozen, thawed, then re-frozen) cans can swell, which can also be a sign of contamination. Cans sitting in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit may spoil.

Cardboard boxes, even those broken down flat, take up storage space in the garage. Unless you run a shipping business or cat rescue, they're rarely used afterwards. Plus, they attract insects and rodents, quickly get too dusty to use, and may go moldy. Recycle them right when you receive them instead. Don't use cardboard boxes as garage storage bins for the same reasons.

Lawn mower mufflers, belts, and idlers stay hot — up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit hot — for a while. Plus, the machines are often covered in grass clippings and leaves, so storing a lawn mower in the garage is a house fire waiting to happen. It's better to store a lawn mower in a garden shed or even outside with a tight-fitting, weather-proof cover.

While your garage may superficially resemble a wine cellar, with its utilitarian floors and lots of shelving, it's really not fit for that purpose. If you're attempting to age vintages, rare or otherwise, they require stable humidity levels and a temperature between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, something you're unlikely to achieve in an uninsulated garage.

You grab a pair of sneakers from the garage on your way to the car. As you start to pull them on, they disintegrate. That's not something you need when you're in a hurry! Even if your shoes stored in the garage look okay at a glance, damage is happening. Most sneakers, hiking shoes, and the like have a polyurethane outsole — this material degrades in high heat or humidity. Instead, invest in an easy shoe storage solution for your entryway that's both stylish and smart.

Even if you don't subscribe to the wisdom that is creating a seasonal capsule wardrobe, you probably pack away your bulky winter clothes in the summer and vice versa in the winter. Garages are often hot, humid, and poorly ventilated — conditions mold spores love. Natural fibers like cotton, linen, wool, silk and viscose are most affected. Likewise, any vintage, antique, or heirloom clothing (like your great grandmother's wedding dress) are in danger. Clothes moths can be a problem, too. Stow spare clothing in airtight plastic tubs indoors instead.

Rubber products — from ATV tires and kids' toys to tool handles and rubber bands — are subject to deterioration from high or low humidity and temperature, and even long-term exposure to oxygen. Keeping rubber items on an open shelf in an uninsulated garage may cause them to crack, crumble, or melt. How long they last depends on the type of rubber. For example, natural rubber has a minimum three-year shelf life; it's five years for neoprene. If you want to extend that, keep your rubber belongings out of the garage.

Another one of the things you should never store in your garage is pet food. We already mentioned why storing canned food in your garage is troublesome. Well, the same goes for canned cat and dog food. Surely, that big, unopened bag of kitty kibbles you just picked up at Costco is fine though? Nope! They attract hungry rodents and other (sometimes larger) critters looking for a snack, which will nibble holes in the bag, exacerbating the problem and spoiling the food. Keep bird seed out of the garage for the same reasons.

Here's a warning for homeowners living in parts of the U.S. with hot summer climates — think California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida. In the sunny season, temperatures inside a garage with zero or even limited insulation can climb as much as 15 degrees higher than the outside temperature. Aerosol cans explode at temperatures above 122 degrees Fahrenheit due to increased pressure inside the can. Storing them in the garage is a risk not worth taking, unless you want whatever was inside (and possibly can shrapnel) all over your garage.

It's good practice to store your propane tank in a cool, dark, well ventilated place; the recommendation may lead you to think that's your garage. However, like with aerosol cans, a garage on a hot day is far from a safe place for a pressurized tank containing a material that's highly flammable when exposed to air. While it's unlikely the tank itself will explode, the pressure relief valve may open, releasing propane gas into the air. Store the tank outside, upright, and protected from the elements and bumps.

An overly hot garage, a patch of sunlight streaming through a garage window, or accidental exposure to a spark could set an oily rag alight. Sure, it's nice to have rags ready to mop up a spill while working on your car or renovating a thrift store furniture find. If you do want to store rags in your garage, make sure they're washed and oil free. Otherwise, use them once and store them in a metal container filled with soapy water until you can throw them away.

The garage might seem like the logical place to safely store used or new paint between renovations or art projects. In fact, it's not a good idea. Most paints require stable temperatures between 60 and 75 degrees to remain in good condition. For example, if temperatures in a garage drop below freezing often, the latex paint in the cans becomes unusable. And if a garage gets too hot, the paint may dry out. Like the oily rags discussed above, oil-based paint has the potential to catch fire.

Acrylic paints soften at about 60 degrees Fahrenheit; knock a canvas at these temperatures and you risk dents. Photographs need to be stored in 30% to 50% relative humidity and below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Mold, once established, can't be removed. Picture frames get rusty or attract woodboring insects. These factors are challenging to control in a garage. Plus, if you're keeping artwork that you don't really like, it's simply taking up valuable real estate for items you actually can store in your garage. Donate or sell it.

Ever opened a book and a silverfish crawled out from between the pages? You understand why a garage isn't a safe book catch-all. Moisture in the garage could cause the books and their covers to grow mold, and the damage from that is irreversible. Rodents may steal pages as material for their nests. True book lovers will resist the urge to fill their garage with boxes of read (or, let's be honest) unread books. These precious receptacles of knowledge deserve a dry, cool storage spot inside your home.

All it takes is a few hot summer days for those tea light candles you threw into a drawer in your uninsulated garage to melt. Paraffin wax, which many cheap candles are made from, has a melting point as low as 120 degrees Fahrenheit, while soy wax can withstand temperatures up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Beeswax, often used in fancier candles, is a little heat-hardier, but not by much. If you don't want to open that box of decorative Christmas candles just before a dinner party and be greeted by a solid wax ball, store them indoors.

Rugs and carpets fall victim to colonization by mold and mildew — induced by the high humidity often present in a garage with little to no insulation and poor ventilation. Rodents and insects that sneak into your garage through cracks might find the tight coils of a rolled up rug an attractive home. Garages can be stinky places — all the gasoline from your car, for example — and textiles soak up the smells. Start saving for a big dry cleaning bill if you decide to store a rug in your garage.

While it's common practice to keep a fridge in the garage for storing pet food or beers, it's not actually recommended. Refrigerators work most efficiently when the room temperature sits between 65 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit to keep the compressor running and the oil inside the system liquid. As we've mentioned above, garages easily exceed this range in hot climates. This means you might run up a higher electricity bill and risk food spoiling. If you really need another place for drinks or extra food, choose a room indoors instead.

Vented tumble dryers need somewhere to, well, vent to function. Letting them vent into your garage will fill it with warm, wet air that has nowhere to go; that's a boon for mold. And since they function best in ambient temperatures above 33 degrees Fahrenheit, they won't work well in a freezing cold garage. You have a condenser dryer, you say? While this type of dryer doesn't need to be vented, it also doesn't work well in chilly climes, with some modern dryers even programmed to display an error code.

The extreme temperature fluctuations, humidity, and presence of pests spell disaster for electronics — vintage or new. Everything from TVs to cameras to laptops will deteriorate under those conditions. Expect frazzled wires, dusty interiors, and nibbled cables to lead to expensive repairs at best and a device that needs to be thrown away at worst. Selling, donating, or responsibly recycling retired or unused electronics is always the better option. If you really must keep them, store them inside in a protected environment.

Your garage may be dark, which is good for long-term linen storage, but it's likely far from dust, damp, and pest free, all of which are not so good for bedding. High humidity may cause blankets, sheets, and pillowcases to grow mold, and the dust that collects on them as they sit on those garage shelves could exacerbate allergies. Like clothing, soft furnishing will soak up unwanted smells, at the very least giving you more loads of laundry to do than necessary when it comes time to use the linens.

Today, most cordless power tools are run on rechargeable lithium ion batteries. While undeniably long-lasting and convenient, these types of batteries pose safety risks and shouldn't be stored in your garage, whether they're packed away in a fireproof safety bag or not. Batteries are technically safe at room temperatures between -4 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, but they may begin to deteriorate or fail at either end of that range. They should also be stored somewhere cool and dry; conditions in garages are often the opposite.

Wood furniture isn't safe in a garage. If the air is too dry, too damp, too hot, too cold, or if you leave a piece of solid wood furniture in storage without keeping it oiled, the timber may start to warp, crack, or delaminate. And that's an irreversible process. It's especially important to find somewhere other than your garage for storing wooden furniture made from untreated or unfinished wood; it's more prone to attack from lumber invaders like powderpost beetles and wood-inhabiting fungi.

Just as the conditions in an uninsulated garage ruins wooden furniture, so too would they negatively affect wooden, brass, and metal instruments like pianos, guitars, and woodwinds. For example, high humidity can cause expansion of the materials the instruments are made of, including any textile straps, leading to cracks. Overly dry weather can cause similar problems. So, when the kids eventually lose their passion for learning the violin or recorder, stow their instruments in a climate controlled part of the house, not the garage.

When the chill of winter descends, it's tempting to bring your wood pile in from outside. Resist the temptation! You should really only bring firewood inside the day you plan to burn it, and that includes your garage — especially if it's connected to your house via an entryway. Stored firewood attracts unwanted and potentially house damaging critters — everything from carpenter ants and termites to rats and mice — that could migrate from the garage to your living spaces. A kitchen full of food is a temptation a hungry rodent finds hard to resist.