Originally posted by calbaz:
I am the co-president of the PTO this year at my children's school. We have run into a problem and I was wondering if anyone else had the same one. We cannot seem to get anywhere to store our PTO stuff in the school. The principal and janitor continue to tell us there is simply no room. My feeling is there is always some room to be found. Where can we put all these T-shirts, books for the birthday book club, sodas for fall festival...etc...? We have thought about renting a small storage unit but the cost is kind of ridiculous! Any thoughts! I am tired of storing all the "stuff" in my garage!

I'm sure this is not the answer you are wanting and it certainly isn't a solution, but I would simply ask the next person to keep it all in their garage. Is there anyone else with the space in their home? If your school has worked to find you a tiny corner in the back of a portable, it doesn't sound like their trying to be mean, but that they just really dont have the space.

Thanks all of you for your help. I am going to try the idea of getting a storage company to donate a space to us. The school has now said they will give us a small corner of a portable classroom but that we may need to give that up eventually. It is so frustrating to volunteer your time and not even be able to get space...Am I asking for too much? You all are so creative in getting your space....my garage is where it is all at now! Thanks again for all your advice!

Is there space at your school for a portable shipping (large metal) type locker? I've seen them on school sites in CA but don't know where they come from.

As a last resort, you may want to try to get a local storage company to donate the space or rent it to you at low cost. Our Cub Scout Pack has a unit donated to us at no cost, but before that we have one that we rented for a $1 a month. Good luck.

HOw much fun would it be to tell the Principal "Fine! WE will just build a Tough SHed behind the building! It's ONLY $2000!"
I hear ya both! $5M expansion going on and our stuff is in the electrical/ plumbing room! NOT one room can be for the PTO. Not for long I'm moving things to my house (big basement, and you can't tell my husband )but I should have to!

The shed would be a good alternate.

Oh I could go on for days about storage issues! Our student ratio has increased to the point that we are busting at the seams. We used to have at least two classrooms that were not in use and we used them whenever we needed to. Now we have to have our music class on the stage! We do have a PTO "closet" to store most things. I also found that our school has an upstairs attic above the gym, so it was my "special place" until the new gym teacher seen me going up there...now I have to share [img]tongue.gif[/img] I have also done some major cleaning and got rid of a bunch of junk we had saved for years... So hopefully we can both gets some good storage advice here