The Annual Collection Check, Step by Step

Every storage guide ends with “check on your collection once or twice a year,” and almost nobody does it, because “check on your collection” is not an instruction — it is a vague obligation, and vague obligations lose to Saturday afternoons.

So here is the version that actually gets done: a fixed procedure, in a fixed order, with a decision at the end of each pair and a written record you can compare against next time. It matters more than which container you chose, because everything else in care is prevention and this is the only part that is detection. A pair deteriorating in a box is not a slow disaster; it is a fast disaster that nobody noticed at a stage when something could still be decided.

When, and how long

Twice a year is better than once, and once is enormously better than never. Pick fixed points you will remember — the change of seasons works, because the two moments when the weather turns are also when a room’s temperature and humidity have just changed.

Budget a couple of minutes per pair plus setup. It is a podcast-length job for most collections, not a project, and treating it as a project is how it gets postponed.

Set up once, then work through

Clear a table. Get the best light you have, ideally a lamp you can hold at a low angle so it rakes across a surface — that is how cracks and lifted edges show themselves. Have paper and stuffing material to hand for anything you re-store, and something to write in.

Bring pairs to the table in batches. Do not do this on the floor next to the shelf: you will handle shoes at bad angles and you will not look properly.

Step 1 — Check the room before you check the shoes

Do this first, because a finding here applies to everything stored there.

• Smell the space itself. Musty air in a closet is a humidity problem for every box in it.
• Feel a box from the bottom of the stack. Cool is fine. Damp, soft, or cold-clammy is not.
• Look for water marks on the floor, the wall behind the stack, and the underside of the lowest boxes.
• Look for signs of pests — anything chewed, and any fine debris that was not there before.
• Check what is bearing weight. The bottom box of a tall tower has been compressed since the last time you looked.

If the room fails, the room is your finding for this session and the pairs are secondary. Move the collection before you do anything else; the reasoning behind that is in how to store and care for retro Jordans.

Step 2 — Per pair, in this order

The order is deliberate: the checks that fade or that decide usability come before the ones that are only cosmetic.

Box exterior. Crushing, damp staining, warping, anything sticky. A box that has been wet has usually shared that with the shoe.

Smell, immediately on opening. Before the pair airs out. Musty, sour, or sharp and solvent-like are three different findings, and musty in a stored pair points at the room as much as at the shoe. This is the check that disappears if you leave the lid off while you do something else.

Midsoles. Raking light along the flex line on both shoes. A fingertip press in several places. One slow, small flex. Chalkiness, powder on your fingers, dead compression, or a visible crack is the most serious thing you can find, and how to tell if a midsole is already failing covers what each of those means.

Sole line. A fingernail all the way round both shoes, including the arch side, feeling for gaps and lifted edges rather than trying to open them.

Interior. Insoles out, lifting from the heel end. Look for mildew spotting, lining wear, and anything crumbling from the underside of the footbed.

Upper and finish. Now the cosmetic pass: cracking on coated surfaces, flaking, colour transfer, dried-out leather, and how the yellowing compares to your note from last time.

Laces and hardware. Stiff, thin, or crunchy laces get retired; the pair goes back with something wearable and the originals stay bagged.

Support and moisture control. Re-stuff the uppers properly, replace or dry out saturated desiccant, and make sure the shoe goes back dry.

Step 3 — Decide something about every pair

This is the step that turns a check into a use of your time. Each pair leaves the table in one of five states:

• Fine — re-store. Note the date and move on.
• Wear it soon. The finding is early-stage decline. The shoe is on a clock whether it is worn or not, so a pair with a tired midsole is a pair to enjoy now rather than to preserve for a wear that will never happen safely.
• Repair or have it looked at. A sole edge that has moved since last time is a job for a footwear repairer, not for household glue.
• Pass it on, described honestly. Entirely legitimate, and the description has to include what you just found; the method is in how to describe a pair’s condition honestly.
• Accept it as a display piece. The pair is no longer wearable and you are keeping it anyway, knowingly. A real decision, and better than a vague hope.

Doing nothing is not one of the five. “I’ll think about it” is what turns this year’s minor finding into next year’s crumbled midsole.

Step 4 — Write it down, briefly

One line per pair, dated. Enough to compare, not enough to be a chore:

• Date of the check.
• Structural findings, or “clear”.
• Cosmetic notes worth tracking — yellowing, a mark, a stiffening panel.
• What you decided.
• Anything you replaced (laces, desiccant, stuffing).

The point of the record is change over time, which is the only thing a single inspection cannot show you. A midsole that felt firm last spring and gives slightly now is a much stronger signal than either observation alone, and yellowing is nearly invisible year to year and obvious across three notes. A photograph or two per pair, taken in the same light each time, does the same job for the cosmetic side.

Keep it wherever you will find it again — one file, one notebook, next to your arrival photographs for pairs you bought used.

What usually comes out of a first session

Expect a few surprises the first time, and expect most of them to be dull: saturated desiccant, a collapsed upper that was never stuffed, one box that has been carrying the tower, laces that have gone stiff. Occasionally something serious, found early enough to matter.

Handle everything gently while you work — a session where you flex twelve old midsoles hard is a session that cost you something, so keep to the light touch described in handling an old pair without breaking it.

Then close the boxes, put the list away, and pick the date for the next one. The collection that survives is not the one with the best shelving. It is the one whose owner keeps looking.