The Journal Of The InnKeeper

I keep getting asked about costume storage, and I'm rewriting the same answer over and over again in costume and cosplay groups, so I decided it was past time that I made an actual blog entry about this.

I have a lot of costumes. I mean, I have A LOT of costumes. And a lot of dance clothing. And dress-up clothes. And work clothes. Let's face it ... I just have a lot of clothing in general. When I still lived in an actual dwelling, I had a 2 bedroom apartment so that I could use my entire second bedroom as a walk-in closet. I don't mean that I wanted 2 bedrooms so that I could use both closets, I mean that the whole bedroom was one giant fucking wardrobe.

After moving into an RV, I needed some kind of long-term storage option for all my clothes. After a handful of years and some trial and error, I finally came up with a system that I really like. I'm very excited about my new storage system.

I found that 28 quart "under bed storage" bins have roughly the same volume as cardboard file boxes (also called "letter boxes" and "banker boxes"), which is what I was using to store everything in before (because they were uniform in size and shape and both big enough to be useful but small enough to carry and limit the contents for weight control).

Plus, because they're longer and flatter, I can put clothing in it with fewer folds, leaving them on hangers and in garment bags and just sort of "accordion-folding" them into the plastic bin. And the plastic holds up better than the cardboard. Also, I color-coded the bin lids. My costumes are all in white bins, my regular clothing is in silver lids, and my "not one costume, but a bunch of the same item" stuff like petticoats and corsets are in green bins.

The picture is a little bit outdated - this was taken before I added several more costumes and before I really nailed down the color coding, so it's not very consistent in this picture, but it got more consistent later on.

I have one bin per costume (or one costume per bin) with all of its bits including accessories and shoes (other than those costume elements I reuse in multiple costumes, like my petticoats). Each costume gets a checklist for all the items that belong to the costume, with the line items that are stored in that bin checked off and the "shared" items not checked off so that I know to look for them in another bin.

These checkists are in a plastic sheet protector and I use wipe-off markers to write on the plastic over the paper when I check something off for an event or to make notes, so I can just wipe it all off afterwards and still have a clean checklist.

And THEN, I have every single individual clothing item and element recorded in a free, online database that includes its location.

When I go to a con, I can just pick up the bin for the costume I want to take, check the checklist to see if there are bits located elsewhere, and I take the whole bin. If I am flying instead of driving, I take the garment bag containing the costume out of the bin and pack just the garment bag with the costume.

I made a template version of my database so that anyone else can use it. All you have to do is create a free Airtable profile, then click the link that takes you to my template, and "copy" that database into your own profile. From your profile, you can edit the database however you want.

I highly recommend this method or something similar. For my non-costume clothing that needs to be stored, I put all clothing items of similar type (i.e. "club tops", "work shirts", "suits & slacks", "pants", etc.) into these bins, tight-rolling them the way that flight attendants pack their clothing (tutorials can be found on YouTube for this very efficient and compact folding method). These items are similarly catalogued into my database so I can find them later. It's truly a space-saver that also protects my clothing from pests and the elements.  It's also super useful for moving.

If you're looking for a better storage method of clothing and soft-goods, I recommend buying a bunch of under-bed storage bins and if you want to get really organized about it, some sheet protectors for checklists, some chalkboard labels for the outside of the bin, and some different color lids to color code.  Then check out my wardrobe database template for boss-level organization.