I think all of my spare time between now and February is going to be spent on my latest project, which is cleaning up my store room. I’ve already reorganized most of my hunting, fishing and camping gear, which was the main focus of the project, but I still have all the rest of the store room to clean up. It might take me a while.
The hunting and outdoor gear is all pretty much well organized now. The exception is my map collection. I’m still working on that. I would have been done with it long ago, but I was given a bunch of maps a decade or so ago from a guy who had quite the collection of Wyoming USGS topos. The problem is that he rolled them all and stored them in tubes.
I have a great map storage cabinet my dad made probably 40 years ago. It stores maps flat, then folds up against the wall. When you open it, the map storage slots become a nice table to use to look at the maps. But they need to be somewhat flat to go into those narrow slots.
The maps I’ve been keeping in the store room for the last 15 years or so are all rolled. And if you’ve ever tried to mess with a map that’s been rolled for more than about 30 seconds, you know it just curls itself back into a tube the moment you let go of the corners. And the longer it’s been stored, the more reluctant it is to achieve a flat attitude ever again.
All those maps are currently laying on my work bench, under about 60 pounds of scrap metal to hold them down. I already rolled them back on themselves, then rolled them from the other end. I’m hoping after a couple of weeks, they’ll be flat and useable again. But there are no guarantees.
So please, don’t roll up your maps. Fold them if you have to, but don’t roll them up. Unless you enjoy fighting with them every time you want to use them.
