You only get the "loaded" message how many items the chest is holding, the First time you open the chest. If you close and open it again, no message. There's a couple of unopened storage chests in the Watchhouse if you want to check it.

Is this detrimental to saving across a reset? If so, I'll empty the chests again ;)

This is not a bug. Nothing happens script-wise the second time you open a chest. It only needs to load in the items from the database the first time that you open it. After that, database read/writes are done only when items are added/removed from the chest.

hmm I would have thought it would state contents limit every time you opened it. Alright thanks anyway.

The contents limit will become immediately apparent if you reach it. I could add a quick message explaining that whenever it's opened, if it would help.

Added.