Monsoon air is hard on gadgets. Weeks of high humidity corrode contacts, fog up camera lenses and quietly kill devices that were working fine in winter. To protect electronics from humidity you do not need a sealed cabinet: a few cheap habits, some silica gel and better airflow handle most of the risk in an ordinary home.

Know which devices suffer first

Anything with exposed metal contacts or a fan is vulnerable. Laptops pull damp air through the chassis, cameras grow fungus on the lens coatings, and anything left in an unventilated cupboard stays moist for weeks. Devices that are used every day dry themselves out through their own heat, so the ones that fail are usually the ones in storage.

• Highest risk: cameras, lenses, external drives, unused phones, old laptops in cupboards.
• Medium risk: desktop PCs on a floor near a wall, printers, routers in a closed cabinet.
• Lower risk: devices that run daily in an air-conditioned room.

Keep air moving to protect electronics from humidity

Humidity does the most damage where air is still. Leave a gap behind the router, the printer and the desktop tower instead of pushing them flat against an outside wall. Pull furniture a few centimetres away from damp walls, and never stack electronics directly on the floor during the rainy season, where the coolest and wettest air collects.

If a cupboard smells musty when you open it, the devices inside are already sitting in damp air. That smell is the signal to change your storage, not the time to buy a dehumidifier.

Use silica gel properly, not as decoration

Silica gel packets work, but only when they are dry and when they are in a small enclosed space. Dropping one sachet into a large wardrobe does nothing. Put two or three packets in each sealed box with a device, and replace or recharge them regularly.

How to recharge silica gel

• Spread the packets on a tray in direct sun for a few hours, or
• Warm them in an oven at a low temperature, well under 100 degrees Celsius, for about an hour.
• Let them cool in a sealed container so they do not immediately reabsorb moisture from the room.

Colour-indicating beads turn from blue or orange toward pink when saturated, which removes the guesswork. Never eat or open the packets, and keep them away from children and pets.

Store the important things in sealed boxes

A clear plastic box with a gasket lid and a few packets of desiccant is the cheapest humidity chamber you can build. Keep camera gear, spare drives and unused phones there, with the lids closed. Add a hygrometer, which costs very little, and aim to keep the inside below about 50 percent relative humidity. Above 60 percent, corrosion and mould become likely.

Change how you handle devices in the rain

Bringing a cold device into a warm, humid room causes condensation inside the chassis. If you have been out in the rain or in air conditioning, let the device sit in its bag for half an hour before switching it on. Wipe the outside dry first, and never charge something with a wet port.

If a phone does get wet, power it off and leave it in a dry, airy place with a desiccant sachet nearby. Rice is a poor substitute: dust from the grains gets into ports and does more harm than the moisture it removes.

Watch for the early warning signs

Fogging inside a camera lens, a sticky-feeling scroll wheel, intermittent charging, or a laptop fan that sounds rougher than usual are all early signs of moisture damage. Catch them early, dry the device properly and clean the contacts with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton bud before corrosion sets in.

Doing a short check at the start and end of every rainy season is enough to protect electronics from humidity without turning your home into a laboratory. Photograph your serial numbers once and store the picture in the cloud, so a failed device is easier to claim.

Humidity is not the only seasonal risk: our guide on an external hard drive backup routine covers keeping copies in more than one place, and using power strips safely around the house deals with the surge side of storm season. For cleaning tips that pair well with dry storage, see cleaning your phone screen and charging port safely. More seasonal guides are on the tips-tricks.net homepage.