We have an 1861 log house that the my museum has operated since 1976. 
We're located in Wisconsin, and though a family of 10 did live in this 
house through many winters, we close it down for the season because it 
doesn't have electricity or heat. When I began working at the museum in 
2000, the standard practice was to keep the furniture and larger ceramic 
and metal objects in the log house throughout the winter, remove objects 
with local historical value, textiles and any mouse friendly objects, 
and pack up the small items in case petty thieves did break into the 
house. The items were then stored in the main museum (after being 
cleaned) and brought out again in the spring when the house opened. This 
worked okay, except that some of the items we displayed were rather 
important historical pieces that shouldn't have been in that 
uncontrolled environment, summer or winter. A few years ago, we made the 
decision to only furnish the house with education collection items, ie, 
things that could suffer through a Wisconsin year that may see a 
temperature range of -25 to 105 (though not lately) as well as dry 
winters and humid summers and get replaced when the stress of such an 
environment (as well as the touch of little fingers) finally gets to be 
too much. Many of the items in the log house were already of that nature 
and the ones that weren't, we replaced with items that didn't have a 
documented history. A grant helped us purchase some of the replacement 
items. While not ideal, we're at least preserving our most valuable 
artifacts.

We continue to winter our mid to large non-textile furnishings in the 
house and remove the bedding, clothing, and smaller items. Replacing 
some of the mid-sized furnishings with education collections has 
actually made closing the log house easier because we store fewer items 
inside the museum. We have also made it a practice to deep freeze 
textiles & woods that were in the log house before storage in the museum 
in case they did pick up some kind of pest. So far, so good.

I would say that in your case, you'd want to bring in items that make 
good nesting material. For the other items, you should consider the 
material as well as the historical value of the items to determine if 
you should bring them inside or not, especially since you do have 
limited storage space. Collections that have historical value to your 
institution and community should be protected as much as possible and 
even though they may have gone through Wyoming winters in the past, it's 
never too late to stop the cycle. This would be especially true for wood 
and paper artifacts. And then in some cases, there is reality. There 
just may not have room for the homesteader's bed in your museum and 
that's the way it is. It was only this year that I found a replacement 
bed for a locally made bed that was on display in the log house and had 
wintered in the house for a couple of decades. Preserve what you can.

Carrie Ronnander
Curator
Chippewa Valley Museum
Eau Claire, WI
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of John Gavin
> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:54 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Homestead furnishings
>
> We have a 1913  homestead log cabin furnished with period artifacts, (not
> necessarily original to the home). We close it for the winter and I am
> wondering if we should move all of the artifacts inside the museum where
> lack of storage space is critical. The cabin with its contents have wintered
> over in the past when it was still in the donors possession. There is not
> any heat of electrical available. Suggestions?
>
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