I sort by colors, Christmas, Australian, baby/child, novelties (fisherman, bricks, rocks, sky, etc), metallics, batiks, brights, flannels, minkee, fleece and All Creatures Great & Small (animals/birds/fish from all over the world - eventual quilt for me!). Works quite well for me. Am working on getting all the scraps cut into sizes for quilts (thank you, Bonnie Hunter!), and those sizes are stacked on shelves for right now - but are very quickly going to overcome those shelves, so will go into clear storage bins then.