Mothballing is a process in which contaminated records and documents that are dry, or that have been dried after water damage, are sealed for a longer, but limited time. These documents may be affected by mould growth, or be soiled by mud or soot. No decontamination treatment is conducted before they are mothballed. In individual cases where major soiling (mud) is present, a simple external cleaning is recommended. The documents are sealed in their original covering material (e.g. binders, folders, file jackets) individually or in logical groups, shrink-wrapped (no vacuum-packaging) and packed in cardboard boxes. The boxes are labelled, placed in palettes and returned to your location to be stored.. 

The process protects your holdings and is completely safe – there’s no danger of the contamination spreading and therefore no health threat to people. If correct handling is observed, the boxes can be stored on palettes or in shelves. Thanks to docusave’s digital inventory tool, every mothballed object is indexed in the photo inventory (PDF); as such, it can be identified and located. If you need to access a mothballed document, we have instructions on how to handle it. In brief: you must send it to docusave for decontamination. Afterwards, it’s once again safe for use. Mothballing is a cost-effective alternative to decontamination.