A better functionality for the craftable storage piles would be to have them placed as a premade stockpiles that only accept one resource, and grow or shrink as resources are added! With a maximum amount. In the late game you might even be able to make bigger versions of the stock piles.
In the menu there is an option for the storage filter.
you can set it from “take all” to “take nothing” 
ANd after building it you can just change the stuff the stockpile or container should store.
And to make that look nice, you could use the Container Mod Free Hosting - Domain Does Not Exist, there you get another stockpiles, for different Jobs etc. 
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It actually sounds like this topic is about the newly implemented craftable storage piles that lighten the inventory in which case this seems like a good suggestion (though not having to harvest them would kinda defeat the idea behind it; Edit: as @Sifika is indeed suggesting in the comments here).
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Yes this is about the new craftable storage piles, not the storage area’s. Sorry for not being clear enough. Forgot about the standaard storage area’s. Edited for clearity.
Hearthlings should store wood and stones in piles without having to “build” them.
It might even be better to treat piles as chests/crates so that the items doesn’t get unusable.
it would be great if I could place designated stockpiles next to a new build site and the Hearthlings would use that.
Right now they don’t take wood or stone from piles and if I select “harvest” from them they will start moving the wood to free spaces in stockpiles instead of prioritizing it for the builds.
while its a not a bad idea, i’m pretty sure that the piles are mainly there to get resources out of your stockpiles so that you can free up some storage space when you hit the inventory cap…
edit:
also, i believe this was discussed before, give me a moment to see if i can find the thread to merge with.
well i found this one, but now that i’ve merged i’m actually not sure they really are the same idea… 
what do you think @jomaxro or @Relyss, same topic/idea, or should it be moved back?
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If I don’t place them they still take up space in my stockpiles as the “smaller” version of themselves. Which seems really strange. It would be better if Hearthlings actually stacked wood and stone in stockpiles to piles instead.
Eh, that wasn’t all that clear…
Ok… I have a stockpile of 4x4 that accepts only wood. when it is full it will contain 16 wood. If a 17th and an 18th wood log would appear, the hearthlings would move 15 of the wood into a single stockpile square, the “icon” would change to the “wood pile” “icon” and the 17th and 18th would also be moved to that pile.
When a new wood log appears it will be placed on it’s own tile and when it starts to fill upp again the Hearthlings would start the whole process over again.
Taking a log from a stockpile would prioritize logs that aren’t in a pile. If there is only piles the pile with the least amount of wood should be used.