I'm in the middle of moving my sewing room into another room where I now have a bookcase to put my fabric on. I was trying the ruler thing but even though I have tons of them none of them gave me the fold to use the space in "my" shelves effectively. I just tried a few things and then found the perfect way and I was off. Intead of having my fabric stack so high on each shelf and then trying to get it out without messing it up I gave up a little space by adding more shelves to the unit. I already had extra shelves because these are bookcases that if you use them for books they start to sag in the middle. Well when that happened I went to Home Depot with one of the shelves and had them to cut me shelving the same size and just went ahead and switched them all out and put a wooden one on top of the middle shelve that won't come out. After a few years of these shelves not being in the case they have staightened back out. I went back to HD and got some more of those little shelf pegs to hold them in so I have several shelves and it's easier to organize it this way too. I'm still in the middle of moving things around but I love seeing my fabric all neet on the shelf. Maybe you can just find your own method without the ruler unless it works for you.