Good day folks!
Did you know that most flour mills did not, in fact, have chutes leading directly to wooden chests? They would still utilize chutes, but they'd normally fill into sacks after being sifted, and other complicated processes that would make it more work than it'd be worth for a simple in-game task.
While it'd be a bit excessive to have such a labor intensive method for grinding flour, I suggest a facelift to the current process used in the form of a flour bin at the very least!
Take for example, the windmills in RuneScape. They generally use 3 levels of opperation. The top floor would have a hopper where you'd load in your grains, you'd operate a lever, and it'd be transported through the system to the grindstone, or quern in our instance, on the second floor. After being ground down, you'd find your freshly ground flour on the bottom floor in a big bin, where you'd collect your flour.
I believe that giving us the ability to create wooden, metal, or stone bins for the flour to collect into would be much more aesthetically pleasing, a touch bit more immersive, and really bring together the production of flour. You could sit there, watching the flour pile up, interacting with the bin just as you would with a chest to take your flour, and feeling more satisfied to see it pile up as opposed to having zero visual interactions besides a number in an inventory slot grow.
In my pictures below, I show one of my ideas I've had where you would have a copper chute or auger leading down to the floor, surrounded by your bin of whichever material you prefer, and the sides exposed to the bin open up. This could range from a single 1x1 bin not including the chute, or up to a wide 3x3 block basin, having the chute centralized or offset as you please. There needs not to be any restriction of size, but I do feel a 3x3 grid would be the perfect setup.
The other option I could imagine is placing the bins down, each bin opening up to each other shown below, and a chute simply hanging above to let the flour pour out freely into the bins.
Interacting with any connected bin would open a full inventory, each bin having a single space of their own, but like interacting with a trunk, it wouldn't matter which bin you interact with, it will open the inventory of them all. The more bins you connect, the more space you have, and the more flour you can mill in one go! Realistically, there's really no true benefit to this besides aesthetics and a tad bit more immersion, like mentioned above, it'll function all the same as attaching a chest or trunk to the chutes. I just believe that, with the new teasers shown, this would just add another nice little bonus. I'm sure the devs could also come up with a nicer design than my quick and simple chisel work, haha.
Let me know what you think, I'd like to hear if you'd prefer something like this, or to keep it old school with a chest or trunk.