Kill something. Ressurect it. Kill it again. You will be left with a permanent ash pile to store things in. All you need is to remember where it is.

Doesn't the Ash pile go away when the reset is triggered for that area?

Supposedly, and this was confirmed by one of the CMs a few weeks ago, the only safe storage is the chest in the house you purchase.

last i checked the UESP has a few free safe storage places

No, they're supposed to but they're bugged; in fact, it's the same bug that goes all the way back to FO3. FNV had this problem too.

The modding community fixed it for both of those games, but I'm hoping Bethesda finally steps up and takes care of the problem.

It isn't a bug. It's a feature. Isn't that what programmers say when they can't or don't want to bother fixing something?

Yes, but we try to only say that when it can be exploited as a feature.

This exploit doesn't sound like something I'd ever want to rely on. It's also a bit silly to store things in ash piles methinks. The game supplies a limited amount of free storage if you're willing to explore or quest to get it and scraping together 5k isn't hard to do either.

The stable-owner at Whiterun was killed and is laying on the side of the road, no idea how he was killed. body has been there for ages. I suppose that could be used...at least until the next patch that might fix it.