I keep my stash by designer, except for Lily pad and two other stores - they get store>designer.
Every time I download a new kit, I clean up the folder to remove TOU and extra things... then I copy a preview to a "previews" folder - which is unsorted other than that... I don't change file names or anything, so the previews are just however the designer names their files (except for "folder"... i change those to however they name their actual papers/elements... I usually have to change Danyale's or Jaimee's... Etc_dan_nameofkit)
Because designers typically keep their same file naming structure, all my Etc by Danyale previews would be together in that folder when sorted alphabetically...
If I like a preview of hers for a project, I know then to go to my Lilypad folder, then Etc by Danyale folder, then find her stuff.
After my preview has been copied to the previews folder, I copy the files to my backup EHD (which mirrors my main EHD in file structure), and then I move the downloaded goodies to the correct place on my hard drive.
My templates are not stored in with the designers... templates are in a template folder, sorted by number of photo spots. It took me FOREVER to get them sorted, but it has made my searches for templates so much less time consuming. I now delete all the pngs, because I can easily pull them out of the layers if I needed to for any reason. This would depend on the program you're using to scrap, if this would be helpful for you... like craft artist (I think) needs the pngs...
I agree, we need an organization pad!
I agree with Sara - how do you scrap? Do you start with a story or a photo? Do you start by colors? do you look for templates by photo spots?