Hi
I wondered if anyone knew of a place that our theatre company could store our abundance of costumes, we're in the Tring - Hemel - Aylesbury area.
If anyone knows of anywhere we would be really grateful, it's getting desperate!!

Cheers

Hi, just a thought for you, have you thought about storing them in one of these self storage facilities ? some of them are quite reasonable, in the past I have used them for temporary items.

May help ?

Thanks sunflower, but unfortunately we live in a small town and there are none of those sorts of places near us.
At least not near enough for costume emergency.

But thanks for the tip.

Maxine! Where are your costumes housed now & why the urgency?
Besides the heaps of costumes!

We currently have a third of the costumes in our garage which are slowly gathering mould and the rest are in black bin bags in the reception of a friends warehouse.

I realise you would probably like your garage back & your fiend their reception area!
As I'm too far away to assist with stotage - may I offer a few cents worth?

I would also gather it would have to be el cheapo & buying/erecting a shed to house the costumes would be out of the question?
In the meantime, with your weather being normally conducive to the farming of mould. Would it not be a stop gap measure to install one or two 25W incandescent light globes in the garage, to retain dryer conditions within the space, both day & night - the cost of which is passed on to the group. It?s not difficult to work out the cost of the power used. It should not be that big an amount. I know here it would cost for a 25 watt globe burning 24 hours a day, to be less than $30AUD {12.36 GBP} per year.
Depending upon the cubic area of space & subject to the amount of damp egress, this will determine the amount of incandescent wattage that would be needed! {That is if hangers are used to allow air circulation} Certain materials used in costuming, may be susceptible to mould growth. Which can be amplified by plastic bags, if they are not water tight &/or sealed or the costume stored correctly!
I hope this helps?

We are in a small town, too, but the building that we rent fo a theatre is big enough that it has space for costumes, too. If there were not space for costumes, we would have to look at renting an empty storefront (of which at present there is an unfortunate abundance). Is that a possibility for you? What about space in an already inhabited building? You might find a shop owner who doesn't require as much space as he has...in the US, if someone donates office space or warehouses equiment to a non profit, it can be a tax deduction at the end of the year...
Best of luck finding a good spot.
Eva

We are currently undergoing a similar battle. Based in Chesham. We have looked at a number of options to try and bring everything together from the various lofts and garages the costumes currently reside in.
As a temporary measure for our current show "Copacabana" (huge dancers costumes) we were able to secure the use of a couple of rooms in the upper floor of a pub.
Our next step is to build a costume store locally, possibly within our current scenery store as we are cutting back scenery as we seem to hire or build new.
We looked at self storage but it isn't convenient (non local) and not that cheap in the long run.
Steve

Hopefully we will be able to hire a barn or somewhere and put heaters in or something.

Another problem is that our financial director is not willing to fork out more than ?50 a month! He hasn't yet calculated what the cost would be to hire all the costumes if we didn't have any!
Another hurdle is that we have just got planning permission to build a house on the piece of land where our garage is standing and the build is starting next year!

We have around 3,000 of our costumes in an ordinary garage. We have used something along the lines that Joe has suggested to keep them fresh and mould-free, and I have to say that in the 10 years they've been in there not one has ever smelled damp or grown any mould. It's just a matter of doing up the garage first.

Remember that they probably won't be covered on any insurance though.

The remainder of our costumes have been stored in the loft of one member's house - an email plea revealed an empty loft, and the group payed for it to be insulated, fresh flooring put down, and a decent loft ladder. And obviously a number of clothes rails and storage boxes.

We store every costume on hangers, and then all hats, shoes, gloves, tights, accessories, etc in boxes by colour.