Using recycled materials

I've recently been spending time at Free Cycles processing some material.
This usually involves cutting up bicycle frames and deconstructing wheels to get the hubs or the rims.
I did a Lot of this in preparation for building some cargo bikes several years ago, so this time I know exactly what kind of parts I need and approximately what quantities to do what I want to do.

The biggest issue when your resources are free for the asking is quite the opposite of what one needs to deal with in purchasing resources. Instead of not having enough, you end up having too much.
Problem is, Since the resources are free or practically so, the stuff is viewed as not having any value, and that means Anything could happen to it unless it's in you're possession somewhere. The resources are Available, but often they are Vulnerable- To being thrown out or otherwise carted away to the landfill by property or business owners who don't want it around, vulnerable to other collectors of such materials, who could show up at any time, vulnerable to the Elements, as most discarded resources generally end up outside.

One must collect up and store any materials they want to use in order to preserve them in a useable state, or keep them from simply disappearing. This takes dedicated space, as most of what one is collecting as a resource is not the sort of thing one wants to live with, Particularly since it generally takes a substantial quantity of individual-consumer discards to constitute enough of a resource to produce something substantial with, and Space Costs Money.

There is a danger in this, of overwhelming the space one can afford to have available.

A person has to have a bit of a scavenger's mindset, It's become counter-intuitive to most people to think in any other terms besides buying new. It's just unheard of anymore, the cultural mindset had turned almost completely to consumption. Even those with the least material resources of all dream of the most conspicuous forms of consumption they can imagine.

This creates kind of a social disconnect as well. Put simply, People think you're crazy for saving up a bunch of old junk. There are Names for such people... Like Hoarder. Names that speak of derangement and total disconnect with reality.
There is a danger of this actually being the case. There is a definite like between someone accumulating a large mass of some resource thought to be useless for some project that they intend to do, and those who do it just because they aare driven to by some other urge.

A person has to firmly have a goal in mind before aggressively collecting anything makes sense, or makes anything more than a mess. A person needs to have a good idea of how much is needed, so one can stop collecting and move on to processing it and then doing the project.

This can require a Lot of patience. A lot of times I'll get an idea for something, but it's fairly complex, and requires a lot of material resource, which just can't be accumulated quickly. I want to just DO it, to begin working immediately on creating the thing I see in my mind right now, before it fades, before I get distracted by other things and Forget. Experience with myself has taught me that trying to build anything before I have all the materials just leads more often than not to a half finished project being abandoned in frustration.