Is this a viable safe storage method for those who dont wish to get a house? If I give my items to the housecarl and dismiss her will they still be in her inventory when I go back to her?

When I didn't have a house I give my items to my housecarl and told her to wait somewhere where she was easy to get a hold of, I would say for sure that its a viable method of storage but I'm not sure if they can become encumbered but this wouldn't make much of a difference if she was just standing somewhere.

Why have her wait. If she comes with you then not only does she fight with you but you have a bigger inventory at your disposal

I used her as a pack mule as well, and she can seem to hold a ridiculous amount of stuff. I did discover that she can indeed die after getting beaten enough. She has a knack for charging into battle when I'm trying to be sneaky.

Well you could be in a mess if your companion is killed on you while you were using them as a pack mule. So if this is their only purpose I would consider leaving them somewhere safe.

The cheapest house is 5K gold which may be worth it to just have a safe place to stash your stuff.

@Roidrage
I had her wait for the point that Napalm Eddie made, I play as an assassin and its annoying to have her charge in when I'm being a ninja .

Yeah, I got 5k gold just shortly after I got Lydia. Around level 10-12? Of course, I'm an obsessed packrat, so the instant I saw that I could get a 5k house, I immediately started looting & selling to save it up.

the companions CAN get FULL!!! i'm not sure how much they can hold since i don't think it shows the overall weight of what they're carrying. they CAN though.

Actually a question on the houses, are all the containers/barrels safe to put items in or is it just the chest in the master bedroom?

Pack mule for me also. Right now Lydia is following me around, but I didn't know she could kick the bucket. I've seen her go down for a few seconds and come back. So I may just take my leave of her and find another pack mule before she dies. BTW anyone know the magic number of KOs before the companion dies?

Don't think they have encumbrance. Do a setav carryweight 0 and they still move.

Companions can carry a lot of loot but they do have a limit. Not sure what it is but a few times when Im loading Lydia up it will not accept certain items claiming that they are 'too heavy'.

Perhaps the number and not the total weight is relevanmt? Don't know.

It doesn't work like that.

If they go down and you cause them damage accidentally, or they are poisoned or suffer further damage from an Area of Effect spell, they can die permanently. As soon as they go down the mobs will not target them on purpose but they can still die from accidental damage.

I did this in fallout 3. I filled Charon to the brim lol. One problem and it's a big one if it happens. If your follower dies its all good just take a couple fast travel trips to a merchant. The problem is if they die and somehow get stuck in an area where you can't reach them, a bugged or glitches area. It's happened to me a few times. Like I said its rare but I does svck if it happens. The only way around it is load an earlier save, the problem with that is I don't play this way. I hate loading saves to change what had happened to my character. I kinda play with the rules 'whatever happens stays".

Anyway I did store items all the time with my companions and most of the time it worked well.

As I understand most followers can only be killed by you. They goes down on knees if hard wounded just like other npc. However they can not be killed by enemies but you should be very careful as you can easy kill them then they are down.

I found that then they start to reach the carry limit heavy items get grayed out and can not be moved.

Not sure if it works on all platforms but on PC you can tcl to the corpse or just use console to activate player 1 (activate should work. activate player 1 is for scripted objects.) it.

I read somewhere that the item limit for companions is 200, but I haven't checked this.

Also, can someone fill me in on where the 5k house is? I've been selling all my loot up till now, which means I've got plenty of moolah...

Follow the main quest in White Run.

I couldn't do this. The game has to have some rules and limits to make it interesting or else I will lose interest. I am limiting my changes to graphical and UI tweaks.

When you complete the quest the Jarl will tell you all about it. Kind of hard not to drop in spoilers lol. How do you hide spoilers anyways?