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Finally counted my scrap lumber pile and hit 500 board feet, way more than I guessed
I was cleaning out the side yard last Saturday and decided to actually measure the scrap pile instead of just eyeballing it, and it came out to almost 500 board feet of usable wood. That's probably $800 worth if I bought it new at today's prices, which honestly made me feel kind of dumb for all the trips I made to the store for 2x4s while this stuff sat there. Most of it is leftover from a deck rebuild I did back in March plus a bunch of short cedar cuts from a pergola project, so it's not all junk. I started sorting it into bins by length and now I'm wondering if I should build a proper rack on the fence line to keep it dry. Half of me wants to just use it for a workbench frame and raised beds, but the other half keeps thinking about how fast scrap goes bad when it sits on the ground. What's your cutoff for keeping offcuts, do you save anything over a foot or toss the small stuff?
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pat_stone9d ago
You said "half of me wants to just use it" and that half is right, so maybe stop overthinking it. A rack on the fence line sounds nice until you do the math on brackets and hardware, and then you've spent real money to store free wood. Scrap going bad is mostly about ground contact and no airflow, so pallets or a couple of 2x4 runners under the pile will do the same job for nothing. As for the cutoff, saving anything over a foot is a hobby rule, not a serious loss if you toss it. I've burned plenty of short cedar cuts and never once missed them. Sort what you'll actually reach for, build the bench, and let the rest go.
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