Use a color scheme when organizing your paper.

Quick tip, long explanation again!

I have a friend who is very organized. She is sweet and helpful, too. She helped me organize my paper and gave me this hugely helpful tip!

Use ROY G BIV or some other color system best known to yourself when you organize your paper. This works extremely well for plain card stock, but can also work very well for patterns if you do a looser version.

For those of you who do not recognise ROY G BIV, it is an acronym for the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I put my papers in this order in an accordian style holder. I put the creamy-not-quite-yellows with the whites and off-whites, and browns in the front. And I put blacks and greys together in the back. I made pinks a shade of red so they are in front, behind the creams and in front of the reds.

I arranged them light to dark, front to back.

This is working really well for me. I did a looser version of this in my 12x12 three-rign binder that contains all my patterns.

Only I had to do them in themes first...Florals, patterns (like stripes circles, words, etc.), pictures (like the papers that have leaves on them)...

And I used the dominant color that popped out at me to arrange them in ROY G BIV style within the themes.

I hope this helps you a little bit, no matter where you store your paper. Hopefully it will make it a little easier to find and use what you have already, so you don't go out and buy something, just to find that you already had that in your pile!