What’s the Best Way to Store or Display My Lenox China?

China is made to be used again and again. However, there are only so many meals in a day, which means there are lots of hours, days, and even months wherein your china is not in use. This is especially true if you have pricey fine china that you use only on the rarest of occasions. During these vast periods of time when you aren’t eating off of your Lenox china, the china should either be stored away or placed on display. In order to increase the longevity of these dishes, it’s highly important that you store or display them with extreme care.

Proper storage can help to ensure that your china remains free of chips, scratches and cracks. It can also help prevent your various Lenox china pieces from being accidentally knocked over and broken. This doesn’t just mean stacking your dishes up in a cabinet, however. There are a few tried and true tricks that can help keep your dishes in tip-top shape. First of all, line the shelves in your cabinets with non-slip shelf liner. That will help the bottom dish on each stack stay in place, which will prevent things from being knocked around each time you reach in the cabinet. Secondly, keep the dishes as separate from each other as possible by using barriers or dividers to prevent scratches and chips. You don’t need to buy anything special or expensive to function as a barrier. On top of each dish, place a flattened coffee filter, paper plate, or piece of wax paper, then stack the next dish on top. If you have a stack of dishes beside another stack of dishes on the shelf, put a piece of corrugated cardboard or foam board between the edges of each stack. That will keep each stack from bumping against the other and causing chips on the edges of the dishes. If you use your china very infrequently—say only on holidays, or once every few months—you should take measures to keep the dishes from getting dusty. If you cover each stack of dishes with plastic dry cleaning bags or plastic cling wrap, you can keep them clean for long periods of time.

Sometimes, even if you’re not dining off of it, your china is just too beautiful to keep hidden. That’s when you need to consider a way to safely and properly display it, as opposed to storing it away behind closed cabinet doors. Luckily, you’re not the first person to have the goal of keeping your Lenox china on view. Thanks to this common storage plan, it’s quite easy to locate china cabinets made specifically for displaying china and other precious items. Just search for china cabinets on the internet, and you’ll be amazed at the wide variety available. These cabinets come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and finishes, but they all share a common trait—the cabinet doors are glassed in so you can see inside of them.  Of course, if you can see all of the dishes, you may not be able to take all of the aforementioned storage precautions. However, keeping you Lenox china in a china cabinet all by itself, as opposed to in your crowded kitchen cabinets, probably lowers the risk of chipping, scratching, and breaking anyway. You’ll have room to space each stack of dishes far apart enough to prevent them from bumping into each other, and you won’t be reaching into the cabinet on a regular basis and knocking any of the dishes around.

Whether you store your china away for safety’s sake or keep those beautiful Lenox items on display, taking even a few of these precautions will pay off. Keeping your Lenox china properly stored and/or displayed will help it last so you can enjoy it for years to come.