What Are Cedar Chests Used For?

Historical Uses

• In colonial and frontier America people chose cedar chests for fabric storage. The aromatic wood was thought to repel clothes moths and provided protection for clothing and blankets. Blanket chests lined with cedar often sat at the foot of the bed, giving their owners easy access to fragrant extra blankets on cold nights. Cedar chests came in many sizes and styles, from medicine chests for traveling doctors to upright chests on frames. An upright yellow pine chest of drawers with an Eastern red cedar lining is one of the oldest pieces of furniture manufactured in North Carolina and dates from sometime between 1690 and 1720, according to the Eastern North Carolina Digital Library.

Hope Chests

• Young women in America often received cedar hope chests as the beginning of their future households. Clothing and other articles necessary for starting a new family found places in the hope chest until needed. Hope chests became part of a marketing campaign by the Lane Company of Alta Vista, Virginia, in the 1920's. Many departing World War II GIs found the Lane cedar hope chest an appropriate gift for the girls they left behind, says the Virginia Historical Society.

Storage

• Today cedar chests serve many of the same purposes as in the households of early America. Blanket chests made totally or partly of cedar make handy storage chests for blankets at the foot of the bed or safe storage for seasonal clothing. Many small chests appropriate for keepsakes and jewelry include fragrant cedar interiors. Well-made cedar chests protect any fragile items from insect attack. Butterfly collector Dr. Alan Goodridge uses a cedar chest to safeguard delicate butterfly specimens, according to Deanna Lytle of the University of Toledo.

Effectiveness

• The stability of cedar and the skill of the craftsman who made the chest contribute as much to the protective qualities of cedar chests as do the aromatic chemicals in the wood. Volatile oils in red cedar heartwood kill insect larvae, including the larvae of clothes moths and carpet beetles, but as the wood ages the oils evaporate. Cedar wood does not repel adult moths and beetles and after three years has no effect on larvae. Tight construction does keep insects from laying eggs inside a cedar chest. Either commercially produced cedar oil or bags of fresh cedar chips will renew the insecticidal quality of the chest's interior.