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Let me start out by saying that I'm one of those people that can measure their stash in feet. I really love paper--the patterns and the colors. It's my thing!

I store mostly by color. Cardstock definitely. For PP paper, I sort by the dominant color for how I'm going to use it. For example, if I bought paper because it has pretty pink roses on it, I will store it in the "Floral Pink" category, even if the background color is blue. But if I saw it and thought, "I love that blue paper with the flowers," I will put it with the blue florals.

I store my papers by color, in 4 categories. For example, for the blues, I have:
Blue
Blue Geographic
Blue Floral
Blue Stripes

The geographic category is for plaids, patterns that have a strong repeat (like dots, grids, etc). Floral and Stripes are pretty self explanitory, except that "floral" can include leaves--paper that just has a botanical feel. And "blue" is just everything else!

The system grew over the years, and I use it because that's how I work. I may be working on a page with a predominantly floral paper and decide that I want to add a stripe in there. Or dots.

For double sided paper, I store by the side I'm most likely to use. Or if I bought it to go with a floral/stripe/print, I store it with that PP, because that's how I will use it.

I will also store collections together. I do a lot of paper craft projects, not just scrapbooking. So I really tend to use a lot of papers from the same collection. Those groups will stay together until I'm done with the project, then I will break them up if there isn't much left. If I have a lot of paper left, I will just leave them together and make a mini album or something.

There are no hard and fast rules and I've changed my storage over the years as my collection has grown, and to fit the way I scrap. If you have a lot of paper, try sorting just one color to begin with. See how you use it and if the system works for you. Then you can adjust the storage before you sort your entire stash.

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