Bill Tindall
There is a smaller rack to the right, a 7' tall pile of walnut that isn't in a rack and a stack of poplar drying that is outdoors. Indeed it is more lumber than I will ever use but the trouble is I don't know what of it I may use. I got rid of 500 bd ft of figured mahogany some years ago because it didn't sell well at the time and I thought I would never make any formal Period furniture. Then countries put an export ban on mahogany and making Period furniture got popular. Now people would drive a long ways to get some the the mahogany I once had. I had to beg and pay an arm and a leg get 75 bdft for a class I took a couple of years ago.

After that experience I am hording anything that isn't easily replaced. Some years back I did some consulting on an environmental problem affecting a saw mill that dealt exclusively with walnut. I didn't intend to bill them anything as they had been a reliable supplier for many years for which I was grateful. As it happened they had just sawed some veneer grade walnut logs for a special order. The owner told me to go pick 500 bdft of walnut as a reward for saving their butt. I chose carefully. Each of those racks has a similar story. The bottom line is that any time I have encountered a good deal(price, figure or quality) I seize it. This philosophy can extend to getting one extra board that looks especially nice when just buying a small quantity for a specific project. That board will be in your pile not someone else's when you need it.

That said, if one works a few hundred bdft of lumber each year, over the course of a lifetime you use up a lot of lumber.