Keeping Projects Organized

With so many wonderful fabrics, patterns and ideas for new quilts I find I can't limit myself to making just one project at a time.  I find myself having a little pile of this project and that project surrounding my sewing machine to the point where I no longer have room to sew.  I had to come up with a solution that would work where I could have the projects close at hand without covering my work surface.

Depending on my mood I may either listen to music, watch a tv show or my dvd of  the first 2 seasons of Downton Abbey, or a you tube video on a quilting technique.  My favorite for you tube is to watch a free motion quilting video while practicing the same design on my sit down machine.  So at any given time I may not want to leave my view of the tv screen but may have completed the elements I had been sewing so that is why I like to have several projects at my finger tips. But neither do I want to stop sewing so now I can reach down, grab a different project and keep sewing.

One of the things I look for at thrift stores are those nice clear plastic cases with handles and other prettier handled cases. I use them to organize the various type of blocks I am making and as they fill, I move the contents to a larger marked container that I keep on a shelf and then replace the small handle container with the necessary cut pieces to construct more blocks.  I also use them for my carry along projects. I may have 3 different cases with one project divided among them.  One for the car, one for beside my tv chair and one  ready in case I have completed the car case and need to exchange it in a hurry.
I have plans to attend a retreat in the near future and I am filling these cases with cut pieces of projects and the instructions to have ready to just grab when the time comes.
With teaching on a daily basis I find I have bits and pieces of time between students.  I find this time allows me to get a considerable amount of cutting done for various projects in between the students and it is something I can stop instantly when the door bell rings.
Attempting to keep organized allows me to get as much done in a day as I possibly can and not get tired of the same project.  I  find working a little on a variety of projects allows me to change the technique I am sewing from one project to another, instead of making for instance, 985 2" Flying Geese all at one time, I find breaking it up with other projects, the quality of work does not suffer from boredom of the endless stack of pieces for a particular unit.
Variety is the spice of life.  Enjoy the variety in your journey.