My preferred way is to have my fabrics fairly - that is to say mostly - stacked by color families, or maybe by designer collections if I want to keep those prints together;
and when I want to make something I can sort of see most of my rainbow of prints at once, and pull out what I want, auditioning them together in front of me.
The only thing is, and this is the buggaboo of all stashes, then I have to put back all that I don't use!!
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I want to thank all of you who shared comments. So many different ways to do it & as usual, it depends on how much work you want to put into it. I really like the idea of the color wheel, & adding the yardages so I know what to buy as fill-ins. Second idea I liked is once I have chosen a pattern, go through the stash, snip the ones I have the right yardage for, then head to the fabric store. Sounds good, but I just can't seem to pass up fabric on sale. lol Somehow, I shall have to put a restraining order on myself!

What I have tried to do is this:
I have a 3 ring binder, which I bought inserts for, the ones that hold baseball/football cards. You can get them pretty cheap at Wal-mart or Target. I cut a small piece off of each of my fabrics, glue them to cardstock that is cut to fit the inserts, then write any information on the cardstock, such as how many yards I have, and where and when I got the fabric (if I can remember!!) This way, if I want more, I know where to start looking. I organize them by color. If I need to add to fabric that I have for a project, I can just take the card out of the binder, and put it in my wallet, it will fit in where the pictures go! It's a bit tedious to go through an entire stash and do this, but it's worth it!
I hope you find something that works for you!
~Heather

i keep all this info digitally and instead of cutting up samples of the fabric to keep in a binder i just use digital photos.

i prefer to keep things digital because i can sort it whatever way is needed at the time - by color, by type, by quantity, by manufacturer, etc.

This is what I've started doing, when I buy fabric I ask myself what is it most likely to be used for, background, borders, focus, blender, etc and then buy the length that will work for the most common size of quilt I make. I tend to make either twin or queen size so I know if it's a fabulous focus fabric I'll likely need 3 to 4 yards. Great border, 2.5 to 3. Blender 1 to 2. That way when I pull a fabric out of my stash there's probably going to be plenty of it for whatever I need. Then all the quiltovers get put in the scrap stash for wall hangings.

No system will ever work.

You will audition some fabrics, put different fabrics together, dig for just the right shade and then fall asleep in the middle of all that wealth with your dog or cat ...

A few hours later you will wake up with the perfect quilt in mind:

Disorganization works!

I organize my fabric by what pieces I think I would like to use together. When I find a project that I want to make. I copy all the yardage info, as well as a drawing of the main block(s) on a 3 by 5 quarter-inch-graph card. On the back of the card I tape 1 by 1 inch squares of the fabric from my stash that I plan to use in the quilt along with yardage amounts, checking off on the front what I have and what I still need. I keep these in a small photo album in my purse, so when I come across a good sale at a shop, I know what I have and what I need.

I love this idea. I'll use this along with the color wheel idea to figure out how to fill in the gaps in my stash. So many good ideas. You guys & gals are the greatest.

I get what I want from stash, line them up and take a picture with phone, then go shopping!
Also take pictures while shopping and send to friends, if I see something I think they might want some of.
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