You need a lot of material, not only for settlements. You need it them for mods or armor upgrades aswell.
There is a help section but i couldnt find anything regarding that would help to break down toaster or cooking plates faster. Its just annoying if i want to upgrade my shotgun ill have to travel to one of my settlements, drop the items on the floor, activate the building menu, look on the items i have dropped and then i can break them down. Since you are going break down whole army of trash items this will take ages if there is no other option around.
So i hope im missing something and someone can help me out on this one

Edit: and yeah if its not in the game this will be the most important mod...