Traditional jewelry boxes are not for everyone. Joni Cohen, a New York fashion stylist and veteran accessories editor, stores her collection of costume jewelry in trays she buys at hardware stores. "Normally, people store nuts and bolts in them," she says. "They're very cheap and they fit in a cabinet. My real stuff goes into the velvet pouches or boxes they came in." These options fall somewhere between high-end boxes and Home Depot.

DRAWER DIVIDERS Most upscale houseware stores carry shallow jewelry trays that fit inside drawers (available at www.stacksandstacks.com and www.lillianvernon.com). "Look for moire- or velvet-covered ones with square compartments for earrings and long, rectangular ones for necklaces," says professional organizer Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out ($15, www.amazon.com). "I like this solution because you can see everything at a glance and when you get home, you can drop your jewelry in the drawer, and— boom— you're done." If you buy a plastic tray, make sure you line the compartments with fabric or felt padding to prevent your pieces from getting scratched.

STACKABLE TRAYS "I live and breathe jewelry, and I buy it every season," says Janet Goldman, president of the high-fashion New York jewelry company Fragments. To accommodate her enormous collection, Goldman buys 8-inch-by-14-inch, velvet-lined trays from Platt Box, a jewelry-display supplier in New York City. "I sort my jewelry by category: One tray might be all my earrings, another might be all my bracelets. Because the trays are lined with velvet, my things stay very still." Goldman labels the side of each tray and stacks up to 18 of them on her closet shelf, with her most frequently worn items (earrings) on top. You can also organize trays by gemstone or by sets of jewelry you tend to wear together.

IN THE CLOSET Women with small jewelry collections should lock themselves in their closets for a moment. "Sometimes people use the inside of the closet door to hang their necklaces from hooks," says Morgenstern. "You can also have very shallow shelves built onto the door so you can lay out your bracelets and rings. This way, you can see everything while you are getting dressed." Look for attractive rows of hooks and shallow shelves at upscale houseware and hardware stores.

ROLLS AND POUCHES A surefire way to protect jewelry from getting scratched (and an excellent idea for travel) is storing individual items in the velvet or suede pouches and fabric-lined boxes they came in, or in jewelry rolls and fabric-lined pouches, which fit easily into drawers and carry-on luggage. If you store a few items in one pouch, even a pair of earrings, keep them separate in little plastic bags available at jewelry stores. The one drawback to this system: You can't see your jewelry. "It's easier to misplace things if they're wrapped up," says Fortunoff. "You don't know what you have."