The tupperdor: the cheapest storage that actually works
An airtight box and one pack will outperform most furniture-grade humidors.
A sealed plastic box holds humidity better than most wooden humidors, costs a tenth as much, and looks like nothing. That is the entire trade, and for storing more than fifty cigars it is usually the right one.
Why plastic outperforms wood
A wooden humidor holds humidity through a lid seal that is only as good as the joinery, and the wood itself both absorbs and releases moisture as the room changes. A food container with a gasket seals completely and does nothing else. Fewer variables, fewer failures.
The corollary: a tupperdor needs no seasoning, because there is no dry cedar to soak. It is ready the day you buy it.
Building one
- Container: airtight, gasketed, food-grade. Rectangular beats round for stacking boxes.
- Wash and dry it fully. Plastic smell fades in a week if you leave it open beforehand; a rushed box will scent the tobacco.
- Humidification: two-way packs sized to the volume, not one small pack in a large box.
- Cedar: a spare box lid or a few Spanish cedar sheets. Not required, but it is what makes a tupperdor smell like a humidor.
Do this: leave the empty container open for a few days before loading it. Almost every complaint about tupperdors tasting of plastic comes from a box that went into service the same afternoon it was unwrapped.
When a wooden humidor is still the better answer
Furniture matters if the humidor lives in the room where you smoke and you want to open it in front of people. A desktop humidor is a piece of furniture that also stores cigars, and there is nothing wrong with valuing that.
Use both: the wooden box on the table with a week or two of smoking stock, and a sealed container out of sight holding the boxes you are ageing. That is what most people with more than a hundred cigars end up doing anyway.
Two containers, two shelves, one journal
Ligero lets you keep several humidors at once — home, travel case, the sealed box you are ageing — and each lot lives in one of them with its own arrival date. What is where stops being a memory problem, which matters most exactly when the ageing stock is the part you cannot see.
Read next
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