Originally posted by vinyblaster:

Items do despawn if they're not in the range of a workbench. The time required seems to be a bit fuzzy.

It's 3600 seconds, by default.

Two ways of getting rid of things:

1. Toss them into the Ocean. Seems simple, but unless it floats, you won't see it again. Do it a bit away from your base.

2. Later on, there is a structure you can build that you can place some things in, pull a lever (and then run!). Thor would happily turn it into charcoal for you. And everyone needs that!

first starting out I had a garbage pit that that didn't go away because I didn't know about the bench proximity condition. It tanked my frame rate, couldn't get anywhere near it I wish I kept all that stuff tho. I should have assumed that EVERYTHING is useful in some way

Yes, if you're still mining in the black florist you have no idea how much stone you will want later on and you will always need wood. Good idea to hang onto that stuff.

Items do despawn if they're not in the range of a workbench. The time required seems to be a bit fuzzy. Sometimes it's the next time you go to sleep, sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes more. It may have to do with how the game loads/suspend areas of the world. But anyways, the details are not important I guess, to answer your question yes things will eventually go away as long as you don't throw them on the ground in your base.

Oh ok awesome. These mobs keep spawning on top of me as I am mining copper and I have crap thrown everywhere.

You might want to save some stuff, lumber and rocks can be turned into piles using the misc tab of the build menu (and no workbench required). Also you'll likely need those grey dwarf eyes later.