Will another harsh winter damage my stockpile?

London_Town

Having finally bought a house with a garage, I'm looking to turn it into a bunker for long term storage of stock. By this I mean everything I need and use, but only buy on promotion or special offer to avoid further price rises.

Classic examples are; washing up liquid, laundry liquid, toilet bleach and toilet paper. Given that we may be in for more harsh winters, does anyone have any experience of freezing temperatures damaging this kind of stuff if it's left in the garage?

I suppose my concern is whether after a number of years (or harsh winters!) things like washing up liquid may "separate". Has anyone ever had this happen? My oldest stock is from 2008 and it's fine, but then it was always inside at my old flat.

Equally, can sealed toilet paper go mouldy over a winter? Sorry, I really do need to get out more!

rosalie-lavender

I can't answer about the weather damaging toilet paper but what I can say is you need to watch out for mouse damage. We have an adjoining garage and used to store bits in there and the mice got into some of the stuff. I would make sure things that are attractive to mice are stored in some kind of sealed container that they will have difficulty getting into.

LameWolf

Also, make sure to use things in rotation; I can't help regarding storing stuff in a garage, as we don't have one, but I do have a small stock of things in the spare room (obviously nothing like on the scale you're doing, though!)

I am always careful, when I buy an item, to put it at the end of the "queue" for use, so that even with non-perishables and non-foods, the oldest gets used first.

ItMightBeUsefulOneDay

Hi LT,

Garages get very hot in summer and very cold in winter. Garages also have mice who WILL chew through hard plastic to get at things inside (food or nesting material). Finally, garages are damp, especially in winter.

To use the garage as a store you'll need shelves, decently made solid wood shelves. Don't be cheap and buy some £9.99 POS from Ikea, it will soak up the water in winter and the "wood" underneath that thin layer of plastic will quickly turn to weetabix and collapse.

Tins are safe, have massive shelf lives and are still edible way past their best before date but you need to run a simple rotation scheme to avoid stuff being there for decades. Use from the front, put new in at the back.
Toiletaries (deodorant, shampoo, bleach, washing powder, dishwasher tablets...) are also safe and don't really ever go off so buy in bulk when on offer. Shove them in tote boxes if you want to keep them tidy.
Jars of jam, cooking sauce, condiments are ok in the garage but the hot summer doesn't do some of them much good. So far I've been ok even with jam 12 months past date. Honey goes a bit weird after a while though.

Pasta, rice and similar will get attacked by mice. They will eat through even the thickest plastic tub and then poo all over your food. It's grim. Personally I wouldn't store loo roll in the garage either. It would only take the tiniest hole in the packaging and you'll be trying to wipe with pre-damped paper.

Pretty much all the supermarkets use a cycle of offers, usually 3 - 4 months apart. So your favourite toothpaste for example will half price or BOGOF periodically through the year. Wait for it to be on offer, buy a load. It saves a fortune not only because you've got it at a reduced price but also because it stops you running out and just running down the local (expensive) shop to "buy a few things" including some the over priced toothpaste which you now need.

valk_scot

An unheated room inside might be better. I have a long corridor downstairs running to my semi-basement utility room...it's bone dry with a concrete floor so I keep all sorts of stuff down there on a run of metal shelf units I salvaged from a skip about 25 years ago. No mice either....the cats would think it was their birthday if a mouse came in the house! I keep produce (spuds, onions, garlic, apples etc) from the allotment down there, jam & chutney, tins, packets etc..Anything, really. It's cool, dark, dry and rodent free.

But what could you store in a garage which may be cool and dark but is also possibly damp and could have mice or rats, plus the temperature could go below zero in winter or very hot in summer? Well, tins are okay but they will rust over time. Anything in glass jars with metal lids ditto. Stores of cleaning products will be fine, toilet rolls or paper products no, dried food absolutely not, fresh foods like sacks of spuds no. Mice will eat candles too. Mice will eat any sort of fabric (so don't store your tent in there) or paper or many plastics.

jcr16

if your not gonna be using the garage for a car, but purely food storage etc. it might be an idea to buy a cheap carpet ( £3.99 a meter jobby) and get a heater installed or rad. one that clicks on when temp drops to freezing, so it just keeps it above freezing temp. You could go all out and batten the walls, put insulation in , plaster board it and tape and joint it. me personally i'd go down this route but if you dont' want to have to spend out then yu don't have it.

London_Town

Thank you all for having taken the time to reply so far, I really do apprecite the feedback and ideas.

Rosalie -I have had trouble with mice before in my Dad's garage when I stored stuff there while moving house. It is amazing the destruction they can cause as I stupidly stored a box of bread mixes out there for a few months. When I came to pick the box up it was really light. The mice had chewed through the box, entered each bread mix bag, eaten it, poo'd and then left. It was almost comical but not very MSE.

ItMightBeUsefulOneDay - wow! what a post, I need to take a print of that to make sure I don't forget any of the excellent points you make. You've obviously done this before on a pretty serious level.

Lame Wolf - you're so right, stock rotation is important for everything and I know this is something I need to be more diciplined with.

Valk_Scot - unfortunately my house has very little spare space for storage so I am limited. However, we all seem to agree that toilet paper is best kept inside.

Jcr-16 - that's an interesting idea, but I do want to keep my car in the garage too. The garage is very deep, almost double length and I only have a tiny car (Fiat 500) so there is plenty of space at the back for my stock.

Pollycat

Instant coffee is another good buy.

I like Kenco Columbian & Costa Rican, currently on offer at Co-op for £2.21 100gm jar (half price).
Cheapest I've ever seen it on offer is 2 for £5.

I had a large stock of loo rolls in my (attached) garage and they've been fine, not damp at all.

No problems with washing liquid (don't use powder - I could see that getting damp and 'clumping'), conditioner, washing up liquied etc.

I save a fortune like this, it really hacks me off if I have to pay full price for anything. I'm lucky that I have quite a lot of storage space in my kitchen too so I can keep the things that might 'go off' in a warmer place.

Barneysmom

You could keep an eye out on freecycle or ask if anyone has a filing cabinet? I've got one in my garage now a massive 2-man lifter with 4 big drawers. There's nowt in it yet as all my stuff at the moment is in the box bedroom, but it's mostly for chemical stuff such as bleaches/loo cleaner and washing stuff. If it gets really cold I'll put bubble wrap round it but don't think anything will be harmed.
The food will stay upstairs in the dry.

LittleBrownFrog

We had a freecycled filing cabinet in the shed for a long time - I used it to keep any chemical nastiness out of the way of small fingers - Nothing ever came to any harm in there, despite it being just in an uninsulated shed & with no attention paid to it at all.

scottishminnie

If they are really desparate mice will also tackle cleaning products. My neighbours had a store cupboard which was unopened for a couple of months while they were out of the country. When they did open it the mice had been busy - they had munched through packets of the foam pot scourer things, dishcloths and wipes but the one that amazed us all was that they had attempted to eat bars of soap. Both bath soap and the green block bars of fairy for household cleaning. The bath soap was obviously softer as they had made it half way through but the fairy was rock hard so they had only nibbled round the edge.
They must have been the cleanest little mice around:)