Just curious… With today’s super-insulated housing and central heating, do m/any Onions keep a colder room or area for food storage and preservation? If not, where do you store things like wines, oils and root vegetables?
2 Likes
Our basement.
3 Likes
Same. We bought one of those wire storage racks with wheels that we’ve used for years in two different basements for this. Sturdy, hasn’t rusted on us yet, and easy to see what we have.
3 Likes
Basements are fairly rare here on the west coast.
Shallow water tables.
I lived in an old house in KC that had a real root cellar out in the yard. Pretty cool. The cats loved it. 
2 Likes
I do not. No basement here, but would love to use our “crawlspace”. Unfortunately the space is awkward to use and gives me “the willies”. It does seem pest and somewhat water proof.
Otherwise we have no “cool, dark, dry” storage available in the summer.
3 Likes
i’ve been looking at homes in the area for a few years now (mostly casually) and one thing that i search on is properties with root cellars (i lived in rural France for periods in prior decades and often had access to one – fell in love with their utility). i’ve always wanted one and basements are nearly non-existent here.
1 Like
Root cellar came with the house. Late 50’s rambler in MN. Plus additional shelving racks in the basement for extra dry storage.
The root cellar is called the booze locker. Which is ironic cause the bourbons live on the curve bar
3 Likes
I have one. I keep my potatoes there.
My cousins on farms still have root cellars, too.
Extra oil and canned goods are kept in a pantry in a part of the basement that’s room temperature.
We don’t have a wine fridge. Quite a few people I know have a wine fridge. The temp in a cold room or root cellar in Ontario is not consistent enough to keep wine at an ideal temp for storing.
We have a basement cold room for our preserves, but not a real root cellar. I’d love one of those.
1 Like
I live in Austin, which sits on limestone. Basements are just not done here. Also, it is both hot and humid most of the time. So we buy things like potatoes, onions, garlic, and bread in fairly small quantities. Not on topic, but we like our butter kept in a glass dish on the counter. Salted Kerrygold does fine. Unsalted anything molds.
1 Like
I use a section of the basement. My last house (built ca 1994) was better (more temp consistent) because it was unfinished and I could put everything on racks and push them up against the bare concrete walls. I kept a thermometer in the wood wine rack and it would typically show 58°F in winter and 62°F in summer here in Northern Colorado. I think being unfinished and not having walls dividing the space both helped keep temps even year round. My current house (built ca 1974) has a finished basement and I’ve dedicated one of the bedrooms to food/beer/wine storage. I keep the door closed to that room to isolate from the rest of the basement’s temp control. Being 20 years older than my last house, the insulation is a lot less effective. I shut the HVAC duct to that room during winter, so the temp drops to around 55°F. During summer I open the HVAC duct to allow AC in, but it still climbs up to around 65°F.
2 Likes
Smart. We keep a combo hygrometer/thermometer in our basement to track when humidity is climbing in the summer months. Then we know to dehumidify, usually by opening windows, before mold happens.
1 Like
