Wasting time, wasting materials, wasting money?

For years I tried to “save money” by keeping scraps of every type of material we use. I looked at it like it was made of gold. To just pitch it in the trash bin wasn’t something that came easy. I suppose when you’re raised to make do with what you have, it puts a bug in the back of your mind to never waste anything. But sometimes these little saved pieces of materials can waste a lot more time than they’re worth.

I would cut a little bit off a 4×8 sheet and stick it back, thinking I would soon use it on a small job. But it seems that I seldom ever had a job that needed one of these odd sizes. By the end of each year I had a pile of these precious little scraps taking up room in my storage racks, or piled against the wall and creeping out into my workspace.

So I built more storage racks—until one day I realized I had racks full of scraps that were never the right size, or if they were the right size, they were the wrong materials.