In my younger years I simply left them in their cellophane wrappers and kept them on a shelf. Typically, by the time I got around to smoking them they would be dried out, have poor flavor, and horrible smokability. Finally, fed up, one day I held aloft my dried up cigars and said, "For the love of God, I need to store these things better!" And I was introduced to the concept of the humidor.

A humidor, by definition, is a container that stores contents at a fixed humidity level. The optimum humidity level for storing cigars is 70% and at room temperature. If they are stored at a lower humidity, cigars will dry out and not be sub-par smokes. If stored properly, however, cigars can be kept indefinitely- for years or even decades - gaining flavor and value all along. In short, if you want to keep cigars around for more than a few days, you need a humidor. Humidors for sale in cigar shops and online are often excellent. They can, however, get a bit pricey, and you can make one yourself for next to nothing.

A humidor itself can take many forms, and a basic humidor is very easy to make. Humidors can range from a zip-lock bag with a moist towel in it to a walk-in, cedar-lined room, as many cigar shops have. Every humidor has two basic parts: a relatively air-tight container, and a humidifying device. The air-tight container can be a plastic bag, a Tupperware container, a wood box lined with cedar -- anything.

The best humidors are lined with or made of cedar wood...this helps the cigars keep their "woody" flavor and ensures an even distribution release of humidity throughout the box. If you can afford a box, I would strongly recommend one. If you use something completely airtight like a zip-lock bag or tupperware container, be sure to open it every week or so to vent the gasses the cigars naturally produce. A wood box does not need to be vented -- it "breathes" naturally.

The humidifying device can be a bit trickier. The best apparatus to use is what is sold in most cigar shops and consists of a piece of foam soaked in a solution of distilled water and some other chemical (I'm not a chemist) that naturally keeps the humidity right at 70%. They usually sell refill solution and you just pour it on the foam every two months or so. If you don't want to spend that much, you can get what they sell at music shops for putting in musical instrument cases- it's a little vented plastic bottle that sells for $5 or so, and does a pretty good job of keeping smaller containers humid. Just fill the bottle with distilled water. This is what I used for awhile and it worked great.

The more sophisticated among us will eventually want to get humidity gauges, locks, and other devices to adorn our humidors. But follow the basic guidelines I've listed above, and you will be pleased to smoke your fresh and tasty stogies.