Okay, so I'm not good enough to actually create anything with the ck, but I might be able to edit(ish) if people walk me through it. What I want to do is make some of the existing dungeons/fortresses habitable ie you can store things in chests and they will remain. And what I really want to do is go back into Helgen keep with its torture room and cages and set up base there. (My necro would love this.) Any ideas how to do this? Thanks for the help in advance. Oh, and just a word of warning, I'm really quite stupid so...be gentle.

Go watch some tuts making cells are supper easy!

iirc you make containers persistent by unchecking their 'respawn' flag. So..
1. In the 'Cell View' window, navigate to 'HelgenKeep01'
2. Locate the Torture Chamber and add a 'PlayerHouseChest' container to it or..
3. Sort the 'Cell View' objects window by 'Type' and scroll to 'Container'.
4. Right click a container (For example 'MQ101WardenChest') and click 'Edit'
5. Make sure the 'Respawn' flag is not checked. Repeat for each container you intend to use.
Note that some chests are copies which use a template as their base object. You won't be able to edit them directly, you'd have to edit the base object ('Edit' the object, and click the 'Edit Base' button). You won't want to do that if the template is used in lots of other places. Instead, you would make a copy of the base object and use that one instead, either by spawning it directly into the map or by changing your target object to use the new copy as a base.

You'll want to verify that the chest is persistent before storing all your belongings in it, so use with caution in case I've missed something.

I've never actually done this before but it seems like you would need to make a duplicate of the place you want (a cell I think), then edit it so that there aren't any enemies spawning there (and pu tin the things you want) and either set up a new door or make it so that the door that would normally connect to the original area instead connects to your new cell. Definitely watch tutorials, but this seems like a general checklist of things that might need to be done.