Do you have a plastic shed?

[Stravaig]

I think the usual brand is Keter. That's what we've got anyway. Are they waterproof or damp inside?

The reason I'm asking is that we're paying a small fortune for our self-storage place and I reckon we could save quite a lot by putting stuff into our plastic sheds on the roof terrace. I mean things like spare pots and pans, dishes, and stuff that wouldn't suffer from getting cold or even damp.

I'm just a bit concerned about packing in cardboard boxes, because if the boxes crumple it might cause some breakages. I'm in the middle of an experiment of packing unbreakables into a cardboard box to see how it fares. I can let you know how it goes. But I suspect you already know how this is likely to turn out. Please tell if you do!

[retropants]

I have a Keter small plastic garden storage thing, with double doors on the front. I think it keeps pretty dry in there. We keep firewood and spiders in it. It's certainly drier than my small shed, which has a rotting floor that needs replacing very soon.

[Stravaig]

Ooh, you keep spiders! What do you do with them?

We once had a resident spider in our house (not in the UK). It was bigger than a man's hand and I was terrified of it, especially when it was on the ceiling above me. We were informed that insects such as that were harmless. Some people, eh? Of course I'm going on about spiders not being insects.

Eventually we had a social visit from a very Christian man for some reason, he spotted the spider and whapped it. Dead. I can't honestly say that I was sorry to lose my daily fear of the spider but husband and I would never have killed it so I was a bit shocked by that.

I have a Cambodian recipe for tarantulas, would you like it? You must take care to remove their fangs.

[retropants]

Stravaig; tempting, but no thankyou I am vegetarian, ha ha!

We ignore the spiders unless they come into the house and make a bee line to under the sofa, then they have to go outside. We'd never kill them either, it's not their fault I'm scared of them.

I've been to Australia, and spent the entire time on edge, checking everywhere for spiders, I was compeltely paranoid that they were hiding under my clothes or in my shoes, despite the relatives (and everyone else) having mesh on the windows. At my friends house, we found a black widow in her pool. My DH fished it out with a net and she did squish it with a shoe. Apparently, they play dead in the water waiting for an unsuspecting child to get in for a splash around. She moved out there 20 years ago, it took her years to get used to them, especially the hunstmen, which are bigger than her hand and very very fast! She is still not keen, but knows how to handle them.

[Westi]

Lots of fun spiders to play with in OZ. We literally had a red back in the outside loo & one in the laundry room behind it. Eventually we (that's me & it), met a compromise. I would push open the door & let it bang shut again & it would scurry up the wall away from the loo seat. We always had Huntsmen in the house, but they were tolerated as great for getting rid of other spiders & insects. I never saw it on the floor but always noted where it was in my bedroom & it just rotated around the four corners of the room.

Several encounters with snakes as well which are way more feisty than their UK counterparts & really don't like getting wrapped around the car axle, not a problem if you didn't have an old car with a hole in the floor & have to do a full evacuation outside the car where it's mates are.

[Stravaig]

We lived in a large wooden house/hut in Thailand for a couple of years (before moving to a real house). The downstairs loo nearly always had a scorpion in it - to the extent that we didn't call it the loo any more, it was the "scorpion lounge".