Hat storage

So I did a thing. I bought some boxes to store my hats in. 

I had them in their original shipping boxes at first but they were just in the floor and I despise stuff on the floor, so the husband moved some stuff around in his toy room and gave me one of the cube shelves that he was using. Now our mega shelf thingy is complete!

Believe it or not, this is the only time since we've been together that this shelf has been completed. We've always used one piece here and there throughout the house, but it's never had a space big enough to be completely put together... Until now. Lol. I really like the way it looks like this so I'm thrilled it's finally whole. It belonged to his grandparents long ago and I love that we are able to use it. 

Anywho, I then moved my hats into the 3 cubes that he had brought in. I liked how they were all eye level and not shoved into a box, but I didn't like how they were all stacked together. I had envisioned them in layers. I originally wanted like a shelf in the middle that I could stack some on and have some underneath. Like one of those wire shelves you put in your cabinets for plates and crap. However, none that I could find would fit in the squares. Plus I really wanted them kept as clean as possible since they are 70+ years old. So after waiting a few months, I finally broke down and bought some boxes and acid free tissue paper to put inside each one. I watched a pretty cool video online from a textile conservationist place in Australia that showed how to properly store certain cloth items, and although they didn't really touch on hats much, I got some good info on general conservation techniques. Nerd alert, anyone? Haha.

So I found these stackable boxes with a window on them and thought that would work well so I could see them at a glance. Now I realize I have far too many hats to get an actual glance at all of them, but eventually I will get some more boxes and I will have some sort of a sorting system for them. They also make slightly larger boxes that will fit right in the cube and I might get some for my larger hats one day.  I might keep all the straw ones in one box, all the blue ones in another, etc. Then I can glance. Haha. 

I knew they would have to be stacked inside the boxes to get them all to fit, but some of them are more delicate (like the ones with veils) so I wanted to make sure I had some of the acid free paper in between the hats. Not only will it help keep them preserved, but it will help keep the sharp stuff from hitting the soft stuff. So I crumpled up some paper and shoved it inside each hat as best I could.

Then I stacked them as best as I could inside each box. I preferred these smaller boxes to the slightly larger ones because I wanted to stack as few hats together as possible unless they just fit really well. Again, delicate. And I loved that I could fit 2 boxes on top of each other. I like boxes and storage stuff so seeing these boxes stacked neatly inside a giant cube storage thingy made me pretty dang happy. Haha.

Now my larger hats will remain where they are which is currently stacked inside each other in my closet. They're all sun hats so they all fit together nicely. None of those are vintage so I'm not overly concerned with conservation at this point. I do take good care of them, but they're pretty young. And at this point I pretty much have no room for any more hats but I'll be damned if I'm not always looking anyways. Haha. Plus I could always somehow clear out another cube. I do have one long cube in the whole set and it would be perfect for my larger hats! But it currently houses some fabric, so I guess I'll have to get sewing! 

On that note, I began working nights a few weeks ago and was really apprehensive about working a late shift. I've always been a morning person. I reluctantly took the shift because that's all they had for the position I wanted. But after a few weeks, I love it!! I used to wake up at 5:30 but not anymore! And instead of getting off work and falling asleep on the couch around 8pm, I now have about 6 hours of free time before work to do whatever! I've had loads of time to workout which is nice because I don't have to rush to get ready for work afterwards. I have been sewing a ton more because I have hours of time on my hands. I've even been playing our Nintendo 64 quite a bit. I'm really liking it a lot more than I thought I would. Plus any hours worked past 5pm gives you an extra $.75 an hour and I work from 3:30pm-12 so that's almost my entire shift! Long story short, my point was that I'm sewing more so I just might actually sew through that fabric. Lol.