Inventory management can be problematic at the start of the game so as soon as you can buy the nutrient processor and carry it around in your exosuit. It can essentially act as an exosuit within an exosuit, being able to store carbon, condensed carbon, carbon nanotubes and chromatic metal. You can also store creature pellets, all flora (both the farming (star bulb, frost crystal etc) and the harvestable type (jade peas, sweetroot etc). It can also store all the items you can harvest from fauna, whether that’s by feeding or killing them.

On the subject of exosuits and inventory management a good tip for unlocking them is to buy the barrel fabricator and build lots of them at your base. What they drop depends on where they are built and they will always drop that item. This means you can delete any that don’t drop navigation data and just collect nav data from the ones you keep as you need it. Use this nav data to buy exosuit upgrade charts from the space station to unlock your slots for free. Well, almost; you need antimatter housing, carbon nanotubes and sodium nitrate iirc.

When you find you need basalt (it only has one use I’m aware of; a multitool upgrade called the voltaic amplifier) it isn’t worth the time and effort to locate it as you will never need it again. It’s easier to refine it using magnetised ferrite and either pyrite or phosphorus.

Hope those ideas help. Safe travels