Setting Up a Cold Storage Room

I recently saw a YouTube video that showed how a large family turned a spare room into a walk-in refrigerator. They used a window air conditioner as a cooling unit. They also used stainless-steel shelving units and counters to store the milk from their cows, homemade cheese and various crops. It was quite impressive.

Our home is small, so we make every inch work for us. We turned the spare room in our house into a cold storage room years ago. It is also home to our freezer. This room is located on the north side of the house, so even during the summer months it stays in-between 50-60 degrees. This helps reduce the power consumption of the freezer especially in the summer months.

We use the room for more than just cold storage. It's a great place to store my larger kitchen
equipment like my electric pressure cooker and food processor. It also holds our winter 
blankets when they are not in use.

Our cold room was a happy accident. We shut off the spare room to save on propane, so the cold storage just kind of created itself since we live in a cold climate. We keep the door closed and we use a door draft stopper at the bottom of the door. We have insulating blinds on the windows, and we added a couple of shelving units for storage. 

This is our shipping station. This cube storage unit also holds some of my study books,
cookbooks and office supplies.  

Our cold storage room occurs naturally. We do not have to cool the room at all. I placed a thermometer in the room measure the temperature. This time of the year the room is around 35.8 degrees which is colder than my refrigerator.  I keep the blinds cracked a bit to help keep too much ice from building up on the windows. 

Last year, I successfully stored 28 pounds of Cosmic Crisp apples for three months. That's about how long it took use to go through them. The closet in the room is the perfect dark place to store our root vegetables like potatoes and onions. We store them in cardboard boxes which keeps the vegetables crisp and fresh for months. 

I kept the apples in the same box that they came in. The apples are stored
in the same manner at the distributors, so I figured that they 
would know best how to store them.

 

 My preserved foods are stored in the cold room. 

Once my cabbage heads are pickled to my liking, I will move them into 
cold storage to slow down the pickling process. The cold
will almost stop the process entirely. 

I don't spend too much time in the cold room. I get in and out as fast as I can because it is cold in there. If I need to be in there longer, I wear a coat. I spent a little time in there today organizing some paperwork for taxes and putting some more books on the shelves. It was a bit chilly.

This room has enabled us to shop monthly and quarterly. The cold preserves the food and helps it last longer especially bulk items like whole grain flours and brown rice. This room has many functions for us. If you do not have a whole room to dedicate to a cold storage area, consider using a portion of a room or a closet. A large ice chest is also an option. Add a frozen bottle of water to keep it cool if you live in a warmer climate. Keep a couple of frozen bottles on hand to switch out to keep the temperature in the ice chest cold. 

Salom,

Mrs. Smith