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jema

Building a store room

From the fiddlesticks crew:

So you've grown all this stuff and have made all the goodies but you need somewhere to put it all. You need a storeroom.

Introduction
to building a store room


So you've grown all this stuff and have made all the goodies
but you
need somewhere to put it all. You need a storeroom. We've recently
completed ours and thought we'd share the results. We're not lucky
enough to live in an old house with built-in larder, the perfect cool
storage space so we had to think differently to preserve our harvest.
I'm sure you have somewhere that will do!


Find a Cool but Frost Free place for your store room


 The most
important thing is that it needs to be cool but frost free, so the shed
at the bottom of the garden won't do, neither will the kitchen as it
gets too warm and steamy in there. Traditionally it would have been
sited on the north side of the house, but don't let that put you off,
getting a cool spot in your house is still possible.

What about
under the stairs (where the larder would probably have been sited
anyways) So clear out the vacuum, bin the old soggy shoes and get
going!! 

The spare bedroom that Aunty Annie
only snores in
once a year at Christmas would be cool if you left the heating off.
Replacing the wardrobe with an open shelf unit ( a curtain to hide the
homebrew when she does arrive if you're worried) would be good and a
fine place to store things.

Or as we did, what about
the garage?
Ours faces east so we thought that was an ideal location for a
store-room. Our garage is like most - a mess of boxes from moving,
garden furniture and unlikely to ever have room for a car in it. Isn't
yours like that too? I needed space for harvested crops, plus space for
chutneys, brews, preserving equipment that wouldn't fit in the kitchen
and other paraphernalia. So we sorted the boxes, dumped the old toys
and cleared out!


{mospagebreak}


Racks for your store room


Once the space was cleared I then had to
decide on how we were going to store all the goodies. Cost is obviously
a factor, I'd seen wonderful wooden racks dedicated to apples for
example but at a shocking price. (you may be able to make something of
course) It needs to be easy to keep clean and for the fruit and veg at
least, air-circulation is important to prevent rot. You could make
shelf units and fix to the wall, but we wanted flexibility,
move-ability and the ability to store a variety of things, I bulk buy
household stuff and pet food so wanted separate shelves for that
too. 


We went for plastic shelf units, after much thought.
They were economical, lightweight, easy to assemble and keep wiped down
yet could store a surprising amount of stuff. My theory being to get as
many things off the floor as possible to make the store a pleasant room
to move round in. While the shelf units are great for bottles,
preserving pans and spare jam jars, they're not suitable for storage of
fruit and veg. Air needs to circulate around each item to prevent rot
and avoid disease spreading that could ruin all your hard work. So I
chose a wire basket type drawer system, widely available, but normally
used in the bottom of wardrobes.  We've one unit at the
moment,
but its extendable, with a variety of drawer depths and units can be
joined together or stacked on top.


Storing Vegetables


Other things like potatoes and
onions need more specific storage not only because with an allotment
the quantities involved means shelf space needed would be vast, but
also because potatoes in particular need careful storage. For our
potatoes we used the clean paper sacks that our chicken pellets come
in. You may have a source of dry paper sacks or some seed companies
sell sacks for the purpose.  Potatoes need dry and dark
storage.
We spread our crop out on a flat dry surface for a few hours to make
sure they were dry and free of mud before packing.



 Onions
can be stored in nets (we used the net bags our kindling wood came in )
but again should be dry first so we left them in the empty mini
greenhouse for a few weeks to make sure the skins were quite dry and
papery. 

Garlic stores beautifully in old
tights or
stockings ( and our mini harvest of shallots is stored in the
same
way) unless of course you are a dab hand at the onion string
thing.

Our store also includes space for  a
large chest freezer which holds the rest of the produce and other
things we buy. 

It
goes without saying that you should only store perfect, blemish free
produce, anything that isn't should be used up first or processed
instead to avoid potential rot and disease spreading through your
harvests. In all cases it's wise to periodically check things in store,
remove any that have deteriorated and remember to eat things! - nothing
lasts forever.


Concluding thoughts


The garage has now been re-named The Store and is
a vital part of our lifestyle. (still haven't found a good home for the
garden furniture though!)

jema

A very important topic, all aspects of downsizing seem to need storage space, a couple of months ago, we took the understairs aproach and made 24 sturdy MDF boxes which could stack and make use of every available inch in an quite awkward space.
It has made an extraordinary amount of difference, simply being able to clearly view what you have and haven't got Smile

jema
Mrs Fiddlesticks

jema wrote:

It has made an extraordinary amount of difference, simply being able to clearly view what you have and haven't got Smile

jema


that was our approach, we knew there was the room for all the stuff, but being cluttered on the floor so that you had to pick your way through to get to the freezer prompted this project.

Thanx for putting it up! Very Happy
Treacodactyl

Good article, my back bedroom is a wine store, feed store and plant overwintering store at the moment. Rolling Eyes

Do you have any problems with pests? We have some wonderful wood mice (I got so close I know they are not house mice ) in the garden in summer; sitting on the blackberry bushes with a blackberry in their paws, twitching their nose. Very idilic and they get so tame I've even managed to stroke one. Shocked

However, when it gets frosty and very cold the little critters come into the house and will munch stored food.

One other thing, have you a piccy we could use?
wellington womble

If you can (ahem) acquire some big bakery baskets (often seen lurking outside the back of supermarkets) you will have a perfect ready made stack and store system. They are plastic, and so easily cleanable, but the bottoms are a lattice that will allow air to circulate. I've always thought they woould be perfect for onions and the like. They have little flaps that fold in for stacking, and out down the sides if you want to nest them.

Almost worth buying, actually - I'll ask my dad how much they were (he was a baker for years)
Sarah D




Our store room was created from the downsatirs toilet; we did this about a year after we moved here. It's much more useful than the toilet was, but we retained all the gubbins under the tiles should it ever neeed to be converted back.
The top area was shelved, and a unit built to fit underneath which houses one large basket and two smaller ones, with more storage underneath. There are shelves all around the top of the walls.
I use it for food storage, ironing basket, laundry equipment, fruit and veg, the meat safe (store eggs and cure bacon and mature cheese in here), keep lightbulbs etc and lots of equipment. It's on the north side of the house, so keeps good and cool all year round.
sean

We've got what should be a walk in pantry. Unfortunately, next doors house has been extended so it's no longer on an outside wall, and whoever installed the heating/water system ran all the hot water pipes through it. Consequently we have the world's largest pan and wellington boot cupboard.
Cheers, Sean
Sarah D

Still sounds handy, though Laughing
jema

Ouch, very annoying Very Happyo you have the room to try and insulate the wall, drylining it with a cm air gap would make a lot of difference.... i think

Confused


jema
mrutty

Use this to keep the heat out
heat foil
sean

I'm trying to decide at the moment, but thanks for the ideas. I might just leave it because it's good for making yoghurt, and I reckon would be good for fermenting bins/demijohns.
Cheers, Sean
Mrs Fiddlesticks

Treacodactyl wrote:


One other thing, have you a piccy we could use?


working on the piccy issue! ( its a size thing!,) too busy ironing and steaming Xmas puds, yesterday! Will try today and then get OH who has photo-shop on his PC to size it and up-load.

As to your other point, we haven't had any pests so far. The garage door is a fairly well fitted, up and over sort and it is part of the house ( which is only 10 years old). Our cats would soon show an interest in poking about in there if there were! Twisted Evil

What I didn't put in the article as I was trying to concentrate on the produce side of things is that due to a good amount of space we've actually got about 3 of these shelf units ( the piccy will make sense of that). One is the food/processing dept, one has bulk loo roll, washing powder, cat food and the like and the final one has the DIY dept, tool boxes, spare light bulbs, plant pots and seeds etc. It seems to be working very well. There is also room for the tumble drier which has been vented out the wall so there is no build-up of condensation.

It would have been pointless to put a car in there ( my Jeep would never fit and OH's polo is needed 1st so there would be unnecessary car juggling in the morning)so we've used the space in the best way we saw fit.
mrutty

Try this free image handling software. It's really easy to use and resize is a two click option.

http://www.irfanview.com/
Mrs Fiddlesticks

thanx for that!

Photo's have now been added- thanx Jema!

And before you comment, yes I know there are apples on the plastic shelf, but the rate we are going through them they won't be there for long! Ditto the full basket on the top of the rack. I'm aiming to find the time to get some appley goodies in the freezer in the next week or so. And I've an apple curd recipe to try!

Of course this for us is the challenge this year, we've set up the store but working out what is realistic storage at the fullest time of the year - nowish - balanced with empty space for the rest of the year which seems a waste. Although the plastic shelves can be dismantled easily enough.

I also realise that plastic shelves may not appear that enviromentally friendly, but they were used for cost, and cleanliness, as a way of getting this started. And although I love my OH to bits he would agree that woodworking isn't his thing, so for us this seemed the best solution. We've since found a junk/house clearance place( Haynes of East Challow near Wantage if anyone is interested) that seemed to do some metal racking so that might be another source of shelving if we need more.
jema

I have very little problem with plastic, so long as it is going to be used as a long term solution and not a throwaway product.

jema
wildone_uk

building a storeroom

i found lots of first class wooden racking for free outside of industrial units where i work , my moto is if you dont ask you dont get but always ask and if you get it thank them a lot and with luck next time they throw something away you can use they may ask you first

wishing all of you everything you wish yourself

laurence
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