I have been quite ill recently and have developed double pneumonia. (Which I would not recommend to anyone.) For about two years now I have had a permanent cough which my doctors could not treat apart from gallons of codine.

Now after this present illness I am having to face upto the possibilities that I may have alergies. I hope I am very wrong but the first thing I need to explore are the feathers and fur. I have masses of them. Most stored in plastic boxes, but very often of course scattered around my fly tying bench.

I am obviously not going to burn all or any of my collection but do want to store it away in my loft. I need to ensure its dry, bug free, as compact as possible, and recoverable as soon as I am declared feather or fur alergy free.

At the moment most of my collection is either in small plastic freezer type boxes, or in very large plastic storage bins with lids. My loft is small and my wife is not understanding (She would burn the lot tomorrow with half a motive!!) So I thought of those plastic vacuum storage bags that I have seen on tv. You can put clothes and bedding inside them, suck out the air with a vaccum cleaner and they go really thin and airtight! My Feathers are in ziplock bags so could go straight in without the vac sucking them up. My fur and skins should be ok as they are.

Would this treatment damage them? The manafactures say that clothes come out crease free. Oddly they dont mention feathers.