Tell me, what's your method of madness?

So some ladies keep their beads in tubes some don't, some have studios and some have rooms for beading, yet some only have desks.

I have a chest full of beads, and it gets chaotic.
I sit on the floor when I use it as a table. I don't have a proper beading tray, I use small triangular little ittsy bittsy traylings.
As a matter of fact, chaotic is a gross understatement. I live in a teentsy weentsy apartment with the hubby, his bike in the bedroom (the bike oftentimes takes showers too),Samantha Regina , best boxer daughter in the world, two kitties and enough acrylic paint in the kitchen cabinets to finish small church ceilings with. And then of course, about 50 lbs worth of beads and miscellaneous items related to beading.
All those magical beady items reside in a chest that also doubles as a coffee table. When I don't put things back to where they belong, the controlled chaos becomes unbearable random mayhem.

So the first picture shows what I use the paint for. That's my favorite mural I did, not much before I moved from NY. It's a re- imagining of a painting I own from a certain Karl Baagoe from the 1800s. Dutch seascape painter. I made the mural for a grandpa who wanted a boyish maritime painting for his grandson's bedroom. I haven't been painting much since I took up beading.

Then we have the infamous dark chest of wonders. And part of what resides in it.
In order first.As it should be. But you know, sometimes life creeps up on you, bites you in the derriere ,and there goes organization.

Notice, that I organize my beads by colors not what they are.
For example not by size, shape , material they are made out of (except for pearls, they have their own box),but color. Because when I think of jewelry, upcoming projects, I think in colors and textures, but colors first and foremost.... (I also tend to organize my books in the same fashion , and so Proust gets to sit on the same shelf with fairy tales, if they both have purple bindings. Since I am a highly visual thinker, I will find everything this way just by thinking about the color of the book I need. This encourages some interesting lateral thinking exercises. I don't have anything against the Dewey Decimal system, it's just not for me.)

And then there is the before picture of sad chaos.

So the question is, how do YOU organize your stuff? I do not know anyone in person who beads (except for one very nice lady called Bobbe, but I have never seen her stash), and I am dying to know how everyone else does it? I came to do my own thing based on how I do everything else, and most things I tend to do differently then most people I know.
Please leave me comments and tell me what you do. Think of this as a bead organizational survey.