I think I recall that one of my New Year's resolutions was to try to reduce the size of my scrap wood pile. I have read stories of individuals that have evolved into hoarders as they approach those "senior years" of their life. (Nope - not me. A hoarder is someone else that the media tends to make TV shows about.) After the interior carpenters finished working on the inside of Shawn's home this spring there was a pickup load of wood scraps that was headed for the burn pile. Luckily I arrived in time to stop that waste and I did everyone a favor by hauling it away without charging anybody for my efforts. There were several short oak pieces plus alder wood. Also quite a few short trim pieces and even some plywood chunks. (Oh man! I must of died and went to heaven. What a treasurer I stumbled on to.)
When I arrived at home I realized that I had a problem. I unloaded the pickup into the garage and my shop and after that - there was no room to walk around let alone do any work. The pickup had to set outside. (I had thought about setting the cat and her litter box outside, but that was when I noticed that look. You know the look the wife gives you.) I had to come up with a plan to organize and store not only my new treasured valuables, but also all the old lumber that I had on hand. I started looking on line to see if there were any lumber rack plans. There were, but nothing that would work for me. 
I have this area off to the side of my shop that the grand kids call "The Cave" and it was a mess. Over time stuff had just been randomly piled in there. It's really a crawl space under the laundry room. I started to build several racks from all this scrap lumber that I now had on hand. I built six units with the idea that I would make two segments of three racks each. You can see those units to the right. (Not too pretty, but hey they were going into the cave right?) I used a lot of glue and wood screws so that they would be solid and could hold a pile of wood. 
The picture to the left shows one of the segments. I ended up with three sections. This allowed me to put all the oak on one rack, cedar on another, maple on another. Alder wood, pine, ash, and walnut all have their own rack now. In fact, now there is more room - in the cave - just in case I happen to stumble on more wood that someone may beg me to haul away. (Just to clarify this one more time, I'm not a compulsive hoarder. I just love piling up scrap boards.)
Now, I must confess something. I went to Menards and spent somewhere around $50 for metal brackets to build one of the sections. I built the other two sections for the cost of a few screws and some glue. I put the metal one near the front, just in case some one (some one who is concerned about my hoarding disorder) looks into the cave. Of course it looks a little more Hi-tech compared to my homemade deals, but I gotta do something with all these scrap pieces anyway. Metal versus wood makes one wonder how my homemade deals will hold up. Ahhh. They were designed by me so they will hold up a long time.
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