Bed, Bath & Beyond has some flat trays (similar to ice cube trays), maybe 7x9 inches. They can stack and hold quite a few earrings. I think it's important to store jewelry carefully or it gets beat-up bumping against other pieces. Even if it's cheap stuff, might as well try to keep it looking good.

Also QVC has some nice ones, the Lori Greiner boxes. Sometimes they come up on ebay. I'll be interested to hear what others do.

These solutions are so much better than what I had before, which was pretty much what creamgogo described.

However, it's still not ideal. Silver jewelry should be stored inside a small ziploc, that's what the silver jewelry sellers keep telling me. And I wish I had it all in one (well lit!) spot where I could see it all at the same time.

My current dream is to have something like a map drawer - you know, a very narrow (in height) drawer, but one that is actually large & wide, into which I can put dividers. That would make things so much easier to organize.

For example, I want to be able to store matching jewelery sets (earrings/bracelet/necklace) together; like colors together, etc. I thought the map drawers idea would work great, but the problem is, those things aren't cheap! And I just can't justify spending several hundred $$ to store my costume jewelry in, even though, as you may have guessed, I do have a lot of it.

My drawers in the vanity are ideal because they are about 12" wide and shallow.

All my other jewelry is in trays in drawers or in a jewelry roll that has plastic compartments.