PCA Forums

Looking for some suggestions. We stockpile batteries. Was keeping them in the garage, in a drawer I dedicated to the batteries but recently I've been seeing some leaking from various packages. I was thinking I'd bring them indoors but wanted them in some organizer. Is it worth the trouble or should I just find a drawer indoors and dump all the packages in there? Should I bother with an organizer and if so, do you guys have any you'd recommend. There's like a billion options on Amazon and most look very gimmicky to me.

Just thinking out loud here in the forum.

Old photographer's trick: put them in the fridge. It chemically stabilizes them. They will never leak, and they'll last WAY beyond the printed shelf life.

I keep my AA, AAA, 9v & CR2032 batteries in the fridge in the back of the deli drawer, in ziplock bags sorted by size. I've never seen any corrosion from moisture but if you're concerned about it, toss a silica desiccant pack in the bags.

The D and C cells, I only keep for hurricane supplies to power lanterns and radios. I keep some of those in the bin full of hurricane supplies in the garage, and test them every year, and some in the bottom of a mini-fridge to save space.

BTW: I also refrigerate my old battery powered electronics. Old backup phones, spare iPod, spare wireless house phone batteries. As a rule you should run lithium ion batteries down to 50%, and then refrigerate them for max shelf life. I've pulled old phones out of the fridge after 2 or 3 years and they still have a 40%+ charge.

If you have a 3d printer or know someone who has... there is no shortage of battery storage/dispensers to choose from on thingiverse.

FlyingPenguin wrote:Old photographer's trick: put them in the fridge. It chemically stabilizes them. They will never leak, and they'll last WAY beyond the printed shelf life.

Coming back to this.

My wife would not go for the fridge idea. We have too much stuff in the fridge. Also, what about condensation? That's not an issue?

Condensation not an issue. Photographers I've worked with would just stack boxes of batteries in the fridge back when they came in cardboard. I just put them in ziplocks. Never seen any corrosion.