After a life of consuming, end-use consumption, burn-through, throw-away is programmed into most of us. I'm as bad as anyone else.

Time to de-program and learn how to be resourceful! I was at least prescient to see that when I built my ranch house that I could use that 5-10% "waste" that contractors figure into their budgeting later on down the road. So it sat for a year: scrap plywood, inch-thick lumber of all widths and lengths (lots of it), spare roofing underlayment, some damaged but not destroyed metal roofing sheets, nails, nails, screws, tacks, hurricane ties and hardi-plank siding.

In the country, you can store such things by stashing out of direct view from the wife (her refrain is that she doesn't want her yard looking "white trash"). This summer, I've put these materials to use by attaching a 12X8-foot workspace to the back of my 12X12 storage shed. It is coming along nicely, even if it is something of Frankenstein's monster of the workshed world.

So be it! What I am doing is I hope more important than the extra workspace. It is resourcefulness training. The two most resourceful men I ever knew were (are) Army Green Beret Master Sergeant Craig Mann, my wilderness survival instructor in college, and David Woolverton, himself a veteran of long-range reconaissance patrols in the Vietnam War (Quang-Tri Province, the A-Shau Valley, etc.).

Whether infantry life or backpack travel, there is some hard learning about reduce-reuse-recycle in asceticism. If you have lived out of a backpack for months at a time, suddenly a piece of wire becomes something other than trash. If you can hoard and save, stash your things somewhere (Woolverton uses a semi-trailer to save his treasure trove of scrap) for future use.

Keeping stuff around without getting cluttered is the key to becoming a more resourceful human being. Don't automatically throw things out. Figure out an application if you can. At least begin to force your way into that thought process!