How to store paper so it still writes well in five years

Paper does not fail suddenly. It curls at one edge, then yellows at the exposed margin, then one day a pen that used to run cleanly starts feathering on a ream you have owned for three years. All three of those are storage problems, and two of them are preventable for nothing.

What to take away

• Curl is mechanical and usually reversible. Acidity and light damage are not.
• Store paper flat, in its wrapper, away from outside walls and out of sunlight.
• Some paper in your drawers was never going to last, whatever you do.
• Buy quantities you will use within a year rather than storing for a decade.

The three failure modes

Failure	Cause	Reversible
Curl and cockle	Uneven moisture, standing storage	Usually, under weight
Yellowing and brittleness	Acidity, accelerated by heat	No
Fading and margin browning	Light, especially direct sun	No
Feathering that appeared later	Sizing degraded by damp	No

Acidity is the one you cannot see

The chemistry that ends a sheet's life is acid-driven. A review of deacidification treatments for paper heritage states the position plainly: acidity is a primary factor in the deterioration of paper-based cultural material, and deacidification exists as a preventive measure to extend its life, using alkaline materials such as calcium hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide.

Two things follow for a home shelf. Buy neutral or buffered paper if you intend to keep the writing. And keep paper away from heat, since warmth accelerates the reactions rather than starting them.

Some paper cannot be rescued

Not everything in a drawer is worth protecting. The Illinois guide to architectural and engineering reproductions describes the succession of light-sensitive reproduction processes that followed blueprinting from the 1870s onward, using a variety of light sensitive materials and supports. Many of the same processes turned up in ordinary office copying.

If you have old copies, faxes or blueprint-type prints among your paper, scan them. No storage regime stops a light-sensitive process from fading on its own schedule.

The routine

• Keep reams in their original wrapper until you open them, then reseal with tape.
• Store flat. Standing paper sags and curls along the bottom edge.
• Keep it off outside walls and away from radiators, windows and lofts.
• Do not seal paper in airtight boxes unless the room is reliably dry.
• Write the purchase date on the wrapper so you know what has been sitting.

Buy for a year, not a decade

The cheapest storage strategy is owning less paper. A ream bought at a discount and stored for eight years in a warm room is not a saving, because the sheet you eventually open behaves differently from the one you tested. Buy what you will use within a year, keep one small reserve of anything you truly depend on, and let the rest stay in the shop where the storage is somebody else's problem.

Fixing curl

Curled sheets usually recover. Lay them flat between two boards with an even weight for a few days, in a room at normal humidity. Do not iron them, do not dampen them, and do not try to bend the curl backward, which sets a second curl in the other direction. If a sheet has cockled from getting genuinely wet, it will keep a texture, and the sizing may already have changed.

The general principles here apply across a whole collection, set out in storing a collection. Which paper is worth the good cupboard in the first place follows from choosing paper.

Common questions

How long does good paper last unopened? Decades in a cool, dry, dark place. The wrapper does most of the work by keeping light and dust off it.

Does paper go stale? Not in any culinary sense, but sizing can degrade in damp storage, which is why a familiar paper sometimes starts feathering. That is the paper changing, not the ink.

Should I keep paper in plastic sleeves? Only briefly, and only if the room is dry. Plastic traps moisture against the sheet and can hold it there.

Is it worth freezing paper to kill insects? That is a treatment for an active infestation, not a storage method. If you have insects in paper, deal with the infestation first.