I know there are questions here about "where is a safe container to store my items", but I don't feel like making lengthy treks to a "safe" container (eg, Winterhold college dorm room, house in Whiterun). Personally, I like to store my items in Riverwood's barrels since they're so close to the entrance where I appear when I fast travel. I have a total of five barrels there that are heaping full of items that I have accumulated since the very beginning of my quest. Just today, I went back to drop off a bunch of loot when I realized the barrels were all reset to salt piles and apples. I lost a lot of game progress as I reloaded save after save until I found the one that had all my accumulated items. There is no way I am going to relocate all this stuff. No way at all. That would take hours (not in game time).
Is there some mod or cheat that can keep containers from resetting? That's all I am interested in. Keeping containers from resetting. I have zero (0) interest in moving this stuff to another location.
Edit: Some research has shown me that these containers reset after a given period of time has gone by without you entering the area the container is in. Now that I think about it, I served a jail sentence in Markarth. Could that jail sentence have spanned the time period that caused the barrels in Riverwood to reset?
Update: It was a combination of the passing of time during my jail sentence and the game time spent after the fact while I was oblivious to barrels resetting. To test this, I waited far outside Riverwood for 48 hours. Barrels still had my items. I reloaded the game and served my jail sentence (it was the 27th of Evening Star when I went in, 4th of Morning Star when I got out). Went back to Riverwood and the barrels were still full. Reloaded game in Markarth, waited 48 hours, then served my jail sentence. Went back to Riverwood and the barrels were reset!
Best Answer
The only way to keep containers from resetting is to personally enter the cell they're located at every X days, where X is the respawn period of the cell, sans mods. I doubt there's a mod that targets those particular barrels, but if you're determined to use them, the Creation Kit allows you to change the properties of containers.
A much simpler solution would be to use the console command "player.modav carryweight 1000000" to give yourself enough inventory capacity to carry all the things, could also be handy for relocating the stash to a safe container.