Anyone who wants to use Cardboard, chipboard, Joann's free boards certainly can. But, there are some of us that own thousands of dollars of quality fabric and would prefer to be safe rather than sorry. And most of us that are particular about using acid free boards are old enough to have experienced what can happen to fabrics that are not properly stored. It really is a case of, to each his own. Hope this works out for you. But if some years down the road you experience similar problems to those described here - you will have to wash all of your fabric to remove the offender and re-package onto acid free storage boards anyway.