Granted I did this on a smaller scale (20# rutabaga), but it worked great: I used damp sand in 5 gallon buckets and they stayed firm all winter long, still have some left. I'm going to scale it up to a big trash bucket this year...I hear you can use damp sawdust as well

I've found that the fridge just doesn't cut it, not enough humidity.

Thanks--- I wonder if I could put the buckets in the fridge? The problem is: the root cellar gets too warm (it fluctuates too wildly, too... 40-60+ degrees!) so even with the damp sand thing, I fear they'd still rot/mold.

I do not get how your root cellar gets that warm. Is it, or is it not, exposed to outside temperatures?

Anyway, I have two root cellars. One is just a large hole in the ground near my garden, covered with 1.5-2ft of leaves. It is a bit of a pain to get in and out of (you have to move a lot of leaves, plus any snow on top), but works very well otherwise. It contained rutabagas, turnip, cabbage, and cardoon. For next year I may prepare some hardware cloth cages, each with a mix of veggies, to simplify extraction.

The other are simply plastic totes, in the garage, on the ground and against the home wall. Covered with a tarp, they go down to about 30F, which is not enough to freeze anything (veggies freeze at 27-28F). Other parts of the garage, off the ground and/or on the outer wall, do freeze. One tote contains potatoes, rutabagas, turnip, onion. The other has apples and pears. I have to have two of them because whole cardoon plants take a huge amount of space.

I agree with others that the fridge is not good enough for carrots. For your case, buckets full of sand in the garage, covered with a tarp, will do (just a tote will not have enough moisture). The hole with the leaves will be perfect for you (I am sure humidity is close to 100%), if you can control voles.

A good way to control them is to leave the hole open, and away from the leaves, until very late in the season. Then on Thanksgiving weekend you fill it and cover it, while leaving a good amount of leaves in the original pile.

I am one person and I store my root crops in the veggie drawers of my fridge. They keep great. Still have the last of the carrots, turnips and beets. You'd probably need a second fridge however. (I used to store them right in the ground where they grow, but the voles put an end to that.)

There must be a dozen variations on containers in the ground for storage, which is what a root cellar is (but it has to be in the ground and the door closed to be effective). Using The Google should return dozens of pictures of underground storage. My potato catalog must have 6 pix of ideas that people implemented.

Dan