Top tips for record storage in the home
Whether you’re a student or renter looking to maximise available storage for your precious vinyls in a small living space, or you’ve just found your first home and are planning out the living area, unique, well-made storage solutions which are customised to fit into available space can be ideal for your record collection. What’s more, many of these tailored vinyl storage solutions can be added to, when needed. You might just want to start with a basic, rectangular cube featuring a drawer or cupboard and three open boxes, but when your vinyl collection expands it’s easily possible to add to your shelving solution too.
Easy and quick way to retrieve your vinyls
If your record collection has grown to such an extent that it’s often difficult to retrieve the album you want to play, using record dividers could be the solution you seek. Vinyls look great when they’re stored in shelving units, but finding the right record can be a chore if they’re not catalogued in some way. They’re such slimline products it can be difficult to add an alpha-numeric reference to the spine, and recognising them by album sleeve colour is problematic once you own 20 or so LPs or singles.
Using record dividers that can be labelled to suit your storage requirements can help you find the right records at the most appropriate times, and you can set up the file system you prefer. You don’t need to store your vinyls in strict alphabetical order after all. Perhaps you prefer to store them by genre, individual artist or band, or even by decade. What could be a better organisational method than a record collection catalogued into classical, easy listening, hits from the 60s, 70s or 80s, etc, etc?
Original album covers are brilliant pieces of artwork
Some of the best album covers around are iconic artworks in their own right. Take the cover for the Velvet Underground and Nico’s 1967 hit which featured an Andy Warhol banana design, or the 1991 Nirvana Nevermind album with the swimming baby for example. Striking album covers like these can be displayed with pride on the walls of your home and will also look fantastic propped up in open display cubes of any open storage or shelving unit. Some of the vintage albums featured in many collections really should be display, so any visitor can admire them for the works of art they truthfully are.
Add shelving units for vinyl storage and more….
Storing your vinyls in a bespoke patterned or grid style shelving unit is another solution that also meets all your other storage requirements in the home. You can keep all your books, records, treasured sporting trophies or unique ornaments in one place, with the most beautiful items displayed and some of your clutter stowed neatly behind cupboard doors or in drawers. You don’t need a massive shelving unit to start off with, as they can often be added to when required. What’s more, modern, pattern layouts for shelving are bang on trend and offer the visual impact that will impress any visitors to your home.
With a bespoke storage solution, you have the ability to add on additional shelving, or increase the number of cupboards or drawers at a later date.
Display or store vinyls in your home entertainments unit
Adding a low level shelving unit to your living space also gives you the ability to store records tidily in drawers or cupboards, where they’re also fully protected. A small unit with drawers, open display areas and a counter top can be placed in front of essential plug sockets, which means cables and wiring is more unobtrusive, and the low counter shelving is just perfect for your TV, record player, decks, and home hub devices. You’ll find it’s easy to stow remotes and any other associated devices in the drawers of your unit, as well as your entire collection of films, CDs, and vinyls.
Whatever you do, never be a fool like I was before and put vinyl anyplace close to the floor. I began my collection last year, and I have amassed approximately 30 records, however there was a mini flood recently, and the records got ruined as they were in a basket on the floor, and I had to get new ones 🙁 I will be using the ideas here to store them safely, as all my vinyl is quite valuable!