Minecraft Storage Rooms

Minecraft has a ton of different blocks and adds more every year it seems. Building projects typically use several kinds of blocks and many projects (mining) generate more blocks than are used up. Keeping these to use in later builds or adventures requires storage, and usually LOTS of it! The best way to store blocks is up to the player and can vary from a giant castle entirely full of chests to the dirt cave with a couple of chests and barrels scattered around. This is a basic guide for setting up storage and treasure rooms in your Minecraft world.

Design and Layout

The first thing to decide when setting up your storage rooms is the layout. This doesn’t just mean the shape and size. It also means how much space is used for storage versus decoration and structure. Storage chests can be packed tightly into a space stacked on top of each other without any blocks in between and still be fully functional. It may not look that great, but for space efficiency it’s tough to beat. Part of deciding on the layout is also planning how to label the chests. Item frames work great and are the typical way to label each chest. Alternatives could be signs or placing the chest on a certain type of block. Since the item frame or sign could interfere with opening the chest you will want to take that placement into account for your design. Here’s a couple of different layouts for treasure rooms-

Maximum space efficiency – Stacking double chests directly on each other with the end facing out maximizes space with the drawback of being more difficult to click in the right spot to open the chest.

Aesthetic & Efficient – While stacking chests directly on other chests maximizes space it doesn’t look realistic. Using a row of slabs or stairs can make it look nicer while also allowing the chest to open.

Aesthetic – Building an area into a kind of chest display can make a room look really nice but sacrifices a large amount of space.

Crafting Area

The next big decision is do you want your crafting area inside the storage room or separate? There’s plenty of options for both. I like to keep the main crafting stations available inside my storage rooms. Sometimes setup as normal stations, sometime hidden as floor or wall blocks. Having at least a furnace and crafting table centrally located in the room makes it easy to grab materials, craft anything I need, and put back any excess. When I have tried using a completely separate crafting room I tend to keep the excess in my inventory and then have to go back later to clear up space.

Size

The size of the storage room depends on how many items you typically keep and how long you plan to play on that world. Starting off having a small simple storage room is fine. As your world grows though the projects get larger and require more blocks. Unless you want to mine and craft blocks per project it’s best to have a decent storage capacity so you can save up the materials you will need. If you are a block hoarder (like me) the main storage room will be one of your largest builds.

This video on youtube from ShulkerCraft has an amazing 2 million item capacity. I am not sure how long you would need to play on a world to fill that up but I think it would last awhile. I may not need 2 double chests to store diamond shovels but I would love to have it anyway 🙂

Remote Storage Locations

Storage requirements can also change based on location. Having a large central storage area in your main base is nice for organization and being able to grab what you need quickly. Sometimes though there is not a reason to transport everything back to the base, or you could even have a remote base that you would like to keep a small supply of materials available at. Here is the storage room we build in what we call our outpost base. This holds a decent amount of the basic building materials, weapons, armor, and food. I also keep a chest for “special” items that I don’t want to carry around but am not ready to take back to the base yet.

Location based (remote base with smaller)

Another option that I have really started to like is having a separate “warehouse” type storage room or even entire building. For us this is generally split into two rooms, with the second using a more space efficient chest layout and holding all of the overflow from the main treasure room. Items such as cobblestone, dirt, sand, or other blocks in large quantities get a single chest in the main storage room with the rest put into the warehouse. On our current survival world, we have a single chest for stone, with 3-4 stacks of each type. Then in the warehouse there are separate chests for cobblestone, stone, andesite, etc.

Organization

Having the coolest and largest storage room ever built doesn’t really matter if you don’t organize anything. If everything is mixed in various chests you can spend more time trying to find a certain type of block than it would take to just go mine more of it. I like to organize by type of block, with stones in one area, woods in another, equipment in another, and so on. Just think about how you typically play and set up the chests to be convenient and easy to find. Some blocks can even be organized by their origin, such as blocks from the Nether being grouped into a certain area. It all depends on your preference and what level of OCD you feel like.

Tips-

Keep items used most often within easy reach of your entrance or crafting table.

• Organize items by type and source (Woods, Stones, Foods, Nether, end, etc.)
• Clearly label or identify what is in each chest and area.
• Setup a drop off chest to place miscellaneous blocks in to be organized later.
• Plan for expansion. This could be adding another level, digging a basement, or setting up a warehouse. The longer you play on a world the more storage you will need.
• For items that you grab often and only need 1 or 2 of setup dispensers or droppers near the storage area. Checkout this post for some tips – Dispenser Tips

I hope this post gives you some good ideas for how to design and build your storage room. There’s so many options I can’t cover them all, so if you have more ideas please post them up! Thanks!