Your school, club or drama group's shared costume box: cataloguing, storing and supplementing
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
6 min reading time
A dress-up box used by dozens of people requires different choices than one at home. This is how you keep the contents complete, clean, and usable—and know what to replenish.
The trunk is in the back of the storage room. It contains sixteen hats, four of which are dented, three wigs no one touches anymore, a bag of loose rubber bands, and one mask missing its cord. Every year, something is taken out for a Sinterklaas play or a themed party, and every year, less goes back in than came out.
This is the pattern for almost every shared costume trunk: at a school, a sports club, a student house, a theater group, or a neighborhood association. No one owns it, so no one counts its contents. An afternoon of tidying up at the beginning of the season solves this—provided you then establish a few rules. Here's how to tackle it.
Start by counting, not buying
The temptation to order immediately is strong. Don't. First, empty the entire trunk onto a table and divide the contents into four piles:
Usable as is. Complete, intact, clean.
Usable after a small repair. Loose elastic, missing button, broken cord.
Discarded. Torn, discolored, or used so often that it's no longer presentable.
Unclear. Loose parts that no one remembers what they belong to.
That fourth pile is the most important. Usually, it turns out that half of it belongs to something that has long since been discarded. Throw that away without discussion—otherwise, it will fill half a box again next year.
Write down the usable pile on a list with quantities and sizes. Not in someone's head, but on paper or in a shared file. Without a list, you won't know if you have eight hats or three for the next party, and you'll order too much or too little.
Store by theme, not by type
At home, you put all the hats together. In a shared trunk, this is counterproductive: someone looking for an outfit thinks in terms of characters, not categories. Someone is looking for "pirate," not "headwear."
Therefore, divide the contents into multiple bins with one theme per bin: uniform, historical, animal, party and glitter, and a bin with loose basic items that fit everything. A moving box measuring 480 x 430 x 330 mm (50 liters) (€ 3.50) is suitable for this: large enough for a complete set, light enough for one person to lift from a shelf, and cheap enough to get five of them.
Label each bin on the side and on the top—on a shelf, you only see the side; on the ground, only the top. With price stickers in 6 colors, 500 pieces (€ 2.95), you can also give each theme its own color. Then everyone will immediately see where something belongs when tidying up, even if they are unfamiliar with the trunk.
What you don't want in a bin: costumes that wrinkle. Hang those up. Self-adhesive hooks measuring 6x6 cm, 10 pieces (€ 5.95) are enough for a row on the inside of a wardrobe door, without having to drill into the wall—handy in a rented space.
Hygiene: The reason people stop taking things
This is the most sensitive point for a shared trunk. Anything that comes into direct contact with skin or hair will be avoided as soon as it looks even slightly musty. Three things help:
Wash textiles at the end of the season, not at the beginning. This way, they go into storage clean and don't smell musty when you take them out.
Allow everything to dry completely before putting it in the bin. A slightly damp wig in a sealed box is the quickest way to write off an entire bin.
Make personal items disposable. Stick-on mustaches, nose masks, and similar items are bought in sets and used once.
The basic bin is the bin you draw from when someone needs something last minute. It should contain items that fit any head, work with any outfit, and can take a beating. Specifically:
If you want one striking piece that the whole group can laugh at, then a mohawk Iroquois wig (€4.95) or a steampunk top hat with goggles (€18.00) is a good investment—they will last for years if they are returned to the correct bin afterwards.
The agreements that keep the trunk together
Sorting and labeling only works if there are a few simple rules. Three are enough. One: there is one person per season responsible for the trunk, even if no one really manages it. Two: whoever takes something writes it on the list hanging on the inside of the lid. Three: everything comes back within a week, washed if it needs to be washed.
In addition, plan one fixed time each year to count and replenish—preferably early in the fall, well before the first theme night. Then you still have time to order what's missing, instead of discovering the week before that half the hats are gone.
Replenish what's missing
Loose items to refill your trunk can be found under Costume Accessories, complete outfits under Costumes, and headwear under Hats & Wigs. Masks are in the Masks collection, and for those thinking ahead to spring, check out Carnival. Bins and boxes for storing everything are under Storage. If you are ordering for a larger group and want to know what's in stock or what's included in a set? Email your list to info@verpakkingdeals.nl, and we'll help you out.
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