Winter vegetable storage

Winter is about half done here so I thought I'd report in on how storing the vegetables went so I can do better next winter.  Mostly it's not been good. This is what I tried this year:

Our cement block garage usually stays a bit warmer than the outside so I tried storing 4 pumpkins, a bucket full of potatoes and a crate of onions out there.  The pumpkins froze, the potatoes froze but the onions have done wonderfully so far.  Some have a few wrinkles or tiny soft spots but most are perfect.  They're just heaped in a milk crate.

In the house, I kept potatoes and onions in both the kitchen and basement.  They quickly went soft and sprouted in both places.  We've eaten almost all of the squash but there are three huge drum shaped winter squash in the kitchen that look like they were just picked - absolutely beautiful. They're like 10 lbs each.  I'd really like to cook them but the little guy likes to use them as tiny chairs.  He probably wouldn't miss just one though...

In the garden- wow I thought I had a really good idea with this one.  I had read about burying a covered bucket and storing potatoes that way.  You pack them in some dirt, lid the bucket tightly, bury it and then cover it with a bale of straw.  So I did.  I had really, really high hopes for this method.   Went out today and dug the bucket up, pried the lid off (it was really stuck) and..... It was bad.  Like really, really bad.  Somehow water had gotten in the bucket and the potatoes liquefied. Oh, it was terrible.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  Maybe I'm just expecting too much?