Any advice for casual storage of consoles and periphials? I'm doing a clear out and finding my only controllers. They are in bags, on shelves, in tubs, and in drawers. I considered putting them all in plastic tubs, maybe with a little bubble wrap, but not sure if that's good for the health of the controllers.
Remember that these devices have seen abuse tantamount to warcrimes from children and teens (or their angry parents) and chug on. In modern times, OEM SNES and NES and N64 and PS1/Xs have been sitting in literal bins in gamestop/dkoldies/whatever flavor of the month retro seller's warehouses for weeks/months/years with no care given to them, and even if they're fucking gross, will still just boot right the fuck up a SIGNIFICANT percentage of the time they're purchased. It's hard to fuck up. Before the retro boom, people were selling their old consoles that were in moldy fucking basements for 5, 10, 20 years and they would still be okay. Don't overthink it.
That said, you pretty much already are on the right track. Clean your consoles before storage (as clean as we all like to think we are, sometimes nasty critters can get inside of consoles due to dust and they will hatch in there unless your totes are airtight), clean your controllers, don't wrap the cords around the controller itself, just do circular wraps and velcro ties/bread ties/whatever you got laying around. Just try not to leave it taut or it can put strain on the cord which on older controllers will cause the rubber coating to crack sooner, and also leaves you susceptible to Cable Burn, wherein the chemicals that are meant to keep the cable loose and flexible offgasses/separates/leeches out and can leave an impression of the cable by reacting with the hard plastic, also leaves your cables stiff. If you've ever found an older power cable laying around and it was really rigid, it was probably that. It's a notable issue with the atari and famicom, a little less with later devices but very much can still happen and be exacerbated.
Costco sells some
great black totes (ace hardware link because the costco website only shows the 12gallon variety) that I'll vouch for. I separate by generation, lay console at the bottom, layer carts/jewel cases on the sides and top and have never had an issue.
If you have devices hooked up wherever you are, and want controllers handy, door-hung shoe organizer is what I use for storing my controllers in my workshop. Works fine for everything but the hellspawn n64 controller.
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