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Pulled my overfull box of fibers out the other day and am determined to weed through it before putting it away. I thought this would be easy as I hardly use them anymore - but now that I've sorted them all out on the table I can't bring myself to part with more than a very few. There are beautiful hand-dyed pieces, mixed cards that match beloved collection kits as well as more recent additions such as elastic cord. A visual and tactile feast for sure. Even pieces as short as 6" or 8" are useful for tags.
So my dilemma is, how to organize them? While it's tempting to keep the Basic Grey collection cards together for nostalgic reasons the reality is they're mostly intact - so even if I still had matching papers would I be better off to sort them into colour families?
There are a few things I'll keep sorted by type: twines, stretch cord, waxed linen thread. The rest I'm thinking of removing from any packaging and sorting loosely into three colour families: warm tones, cool tones and neutrals, and putting in baggies. Would love to hear if you have a system you like.

Need to follow this as mine are all shoved in drawers and in no particular order.

Mine are sorted by color families into gallon ziploc baggies. Blues, greens, blue-greens, reds & pinks, purples, black, white & cream, Christmas, metallics, browns... but I do need to go through and thin out those baggies to a manageable amount, because even sorted I'm still not using them like I should. I will say that it makes it a lot easier for projects when I need a certain color of fiber/ribbon to simply grab a bag and dig through it!

Got back to sorting/purging my fibers this morning. I went with a simple baggie system; stretch cord, bakers twine, jute and waxed linen thread each have a baggie. Fibers were all removed from original packaging/cards; the Basic Grey sets each got their own baggie and the rest I sorted by colour family. Thanks Monica, your comments convinced me this was the way to go.

They all fit nicely in this fun lunchbag I picked up last summer; 3 Sprouts is the company that makes the fabric bins - meant to hold diapers in the nursery - that fit perfectly on Ikea Expedit/Kallax shelves. Now that I'm reacquainted with what's in here I hope to find a use for some of it, as it's really too lovely to languish hidden on a shelf - even in a container as cute as this.

I know what you mean about not being able to pare them down once they're all organized. I tried to do the same thing about a year ago. I have two types of ribbon/fiber storage. I have a ribbon ladder made of cheap chain, dowel rods and clothespins for the ribbon on spools, but almost everything else was wound onto embroidery floss cards and stored in a plastic box made to hold those cards. I have two such boxes because once I had everything all wound and sorted by color, I didn't want to get rid of it.

Thankfully those two boxes and the larger stuff that's still on cards all fits (barely) in a single drawer. So as long as I don't go on another ribbon buying binge or order a Websters Pages warehouse box, I should be in good shape with just that drawer. If I outgrow that drawer, I'm in trouble.

Ribbons are a completely separate thing here; I have all mine also sorted in rainbow order and wound on cards, in two shoebox-size boxes. Eventually I hope to go through them and pare it down to just one box, but for now they are organized so won't take precedence over other things that need sorting first.

So happy for you. Projects like these can immobilize me (avoiding them). That whale is adorable. Perfect thing to corral all your bags of fibers.

Mine are all in a mess currently. They were on spools which were hung on dowels on the back of the closet door. Unfortunately Bugs (Demon!) likes to pull them off of the spools and drag them through the house after he finishes playing with them. I've been picking them up and shoving them into baggies. This is one of my rainy day organization projects. IF I can figure out a way to keep him out of them.

Glad I could help, Keitha! you certainly had a productive day organizing your stash.