Unfortunately, I have no rules and that's why my sewing area looks like it does. I like having different projects out because if I need a break from my present project, I can take a few minutes to sort fabric scraps by color or trim a few more scrappy HST's. I have, however, been organizing my scraps by different colors because it saves lots of time when looking for a specific color. I haven't trained my 2 groups that give me their scraps to sort by color. Lol!
I do get to a point where I toss everything into a bin or two in order to get a few clean surfaces but eventually I dump it out and start again with those scraps!
Connie