jcrow what always works best for me in my ongoing battle to tame the scraps is to have a specific pattern in mind, then go through the scrap mountain and pull pieces that will work for that quilt. They get ironed, trimmed to the appropriate size, then if there's anything left over, it gets put neatly away. That's half my problem, I have to constantly work to clean up after myself and put things away after I've used them. It does NOT come naturally to me.
Right now I am cutting for two different scrappy quilts, one called Flock of Geese Medallion from the "American Country Scrap Quilts" book by Fons & Porter, and a super scrappy Scrappy Trip Around the World from Bonnie Hunter's site. The Flock of Geese Medallion uses 2 inch and 3.5 inch half square triangles, so if I have a scrap that I can get a 3.5 inch or 4.5 inch square, and if it's in "country" colors, it goes into that quilt. The super scrappy Trip Around the World uses 2 inch squares -- individual squares as opposed to strips, which is how it's normally constructed. So I can use one solitary 2 inch square in a block. Each block uses 36 squares and so far I'm averaging a minimum of 15 different fabrics per block. I'm going to need over 5,000 squares for that one so, yeah, I'm gonna be working on this one for a while ... but it lets me play with the fabric and the different color combinations, which is my favorite part of quilting.
I encourage you to browse the online patterns for an hour or so (do you belong to Pinterest?) grab your rotary cutter and attack that Scrap Mountain. Remember, if you don't like the quilt top when you're done, it can always be donated to a good cause. People who have lose everything (or never had it to lose in the first place) aren't going to care if the quilt is a Great Work of Art, they just know it's something to keep them warm that somebody cared enough to make for them. I've made many string quilts and 9-patch quilts to keep my scrap bins from totally overwhelming my sewing space and have donated many, many quilts to charity through the years.