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[ZenCadenza]

Why do my dwarves refuse to store things in bins?

-Max bins in Finished Goods stockpile is set to 121.
-No reserved bins anywhere in the fortress.
-30 excess wooden bins in furniture stockpile.
-4 (out of 50) dwarves set as pure item haulers.

Despite this, dwarves will invariably fill like 2 bins, then place everything else on the ground. Soon, the stockpile is filled with stone crafts just laying around. The same applies for gem, bar/block, and cloth stockpiles.
I've tried deleting and remaking the stockpiles, reserving bins, increasing/decreasing number of max bins, setting the furniture stockpile to give to the craft stockpile. Nothing works. This is extremely frustrating because (a) I have a ton of unused bins lying around; (b) I have to haul every craft to the trading post one at a time; (c) Workshops fill with crafts; (d) Stockpiles quickly run out of space.

[wierd]

Bins and stockpiles are for chumps anyway.

Just use a quantum stockpile, or a quantum dump instead.

[Quietust]

From what I understand, the "proper" behavior for bins and stockpiles is that it will try to keep one "empty" bin assigned to the stockpile at all times, and stockpiling jobs will try to use already-full bins before resorting to the empty one. If you produce a large number of goods at once, they can overwhelm the bin selection logic and just get dropped on the floor, but once the bin is properly assigned to the stockpile and brought there, the items usually get stored inside it quickly enough (often accompanied by a bunch of "cancels Store Item in Bin: Job item misplaced" messages if other dwarves were on their way to put things into the bin before the bin itself was collected).

As for your solutions
1. Deleting and recreating the stockpile ought to fix any problems. Make sure it's not set to use wheelbarrows, though, since that can mess things up (though finished goods stockpiles should default to zero wheelbarrows).
2. Reserving bins from the Stockpile menu is exactly what you don't want to do - that option prevents bins from being assigned to stockpiles for storage use. Exactly why it exists is not clear; the corresponding Reserved Barrels option is intended to make sure they're available for workshop jobs (e.g. brewing drinks), but there are no workshop jobs that use bins.
3. I'm not sure whether bins are covered by give/take links, but if they are, that could case problems.

If you can post your savegame on DFFD, someone here might be able to figure out what's going wrong.

[fractalman]

Don't stockpile bins as 'furniture'. Doing so will only mess your stockpiles up.

Don't stockpile anything under the furniture category, really. Let the workshops in question become cluttered, it actually saves time overall-and you can always deconstruct/reconstruct when it hits epic clutter levels.

Don't reserve 121 bins with only 30 bins in the fort, unless that's the ONLY bin-using stockpile in the fort.

lastly: big stockpiles have higher capacity, but they take longer for dwarves to start gathering the needed bins or rock pots. 
Use a 2x10 stockpile for your trade goods.

[wierd]

For things that don't "spoil", I just abuse a garbage dump to get rid of epic clutter.

Basically, ensure there are no other garbage dumps, then d,b,d over the workshop.

Dwarves will arrive in large numbers to "haul the trash".

When they are done, d,b,r over the garbage dump, and delete the dump.
If you really want to, you can put a 1x1 stockpile under the resulting mountain of stuff.

This is especially useful for bars and bricks, since you can pack infinity-many of them on a single tile, uses no bins, and clears a quantum stocked workshop without destroying it.

You still need stockpiles for food items, because they rot quickly outside of one, but for items that really don't degrade in quality from lying around, it works well.

[Bumber]

Reserving bins from the Stockpile menu is exactly what you don't want to do - that option prevents bins from being assigned to stockpiles for storage use. Exactly why it exists is not clear; the corresponding Reserved Barrels option is intended to make sure they're available for workshop jobs (e.g. brewing drinks), but there are no workshop jobs that use bins.

I would assume it's meant to keep more empty bins in the stockpile ahead of time, as opposed to waiting until they're needed. I would think it should help with the floor-dropping issue (unless I'm misunderstanding it.)

[Quietust]

Reserving bins from the Stockpile menu is exactly what you don't want to do - that option prevents bins from being assigned to stockpiles for storage use. Exactly why it exists is not clear; the corresponding Reserved Barrels option is intended to make sure they're available for workshop jobs (e.g. brewing drinks), but there are no workshop jobs that use bins.

I would assume it's meant to keep more empty bins in the stockpile ahead of time, as opposed to waiting until they're needed. I would think it should help with the floor-dropping issue (unless I'm misunderstanding it.)

You are misunderstanding it - when you set the "reserved bins" setting in the Stockpile menu (i.e. the one from which you place new stockpiles) to a nonzero value, then that many bins will never EVER be used for item storage, no matter what. The "reserved barrels" setting works exactly the same way (except with barrels, of course), but that one is actually useful because those reserved barrels can then be used for workshop jobs (namely, brewing drinks and extracting gnomeblight - an empty barrel that is assigned to a stockpile cannot be used for workshop jobs).

Do not confuse the global "reserved bins/barrels" settings with the per-stockpile "maximum bins/barrels" setting - the latter merely set the maximum number of containers that can be assigned to the stockpile. Only one empty container is ever assigned to a given stockpile at once; it isn't until items get stored inside said container that another empty one will get assigned (and stockpiling jobs prefer nonempty containers over empty ones, so you won't end up with a crafts stockpile having 30 bins each containing a single bracelet or a food stockpile having 30 barrels each containing a single plump helmet).

[Bumber]

-snip-

Thanks. Good to know.