I love this thread too! Here are a few of my ideas.
Baby food jars or other small containers with metal lids. I have a piece of wood that is suspended between two small book shelves. I take the lid off of the jar, and nail it to the board so that when I put the board up, the lids are on the bottom. I fill the jars with whatever (buttons, beads, etc) and then screw the jar onto the lid. It keeps the jars off of a surface and it looks interesting.
I use the nice coffee cans with the plastic lids to keep my knitting yarns in. I cut a cross in the lid, run the yarn through the cross and the yarn ball just bounces around in the can evenly feeding my project.
I have a shower caddy with handles - I got it at the dollar store. I leave this on my cutting table. I keep my cutter, small scissors, my marking chalks etc. in it. All in one place, easily accessed, neat and out of the way.
I use the space saver bags (small) or zip loc kinds of bags to keep projects together, neat and out of the way. I put a 3x5 inside the bag with the name of the project so that is visible when I need to see waht project is in the bag.
I use the space saver bags to keep pieces of batting neatly sorted. I can compress the bags and save on space. I keep all the different types of like batting together (and I use the 3x5 idea again).
Thank you all for sharing your ideas!!!