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 anyway)? 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!