As I look at other people's worlds and their chest it is A MESS. I am very sure that I have OCD myself, so I am a neat freak when it comes to video games. Not so much real life though. I always see that people struggle on how to organize and they spend a large amount of time searching for one thing. So I am going to give a few tips on organizing your chests. (Not so much for all items maps).
Tips:
1. Get a basic structure going. Put Materials in this chest, weapons in this one, pickaxes in this one, and so on.
2. Blocks should be kept in at least 2 chests. Upon entering hardmode, your basic blocks are going to come in large amounts. Dirt, snow, sand, mud, ash, crimson, corruption, hallow, and many more.
3. Put your furniture into a chest. Don't throw your doors and tables in with the blocks. It will get very confusing.
4. Ores/Bars should always be kept in at least 2 chests whether it be pre-hardmode and hardmode, or sorting by ores with the bars. I use 1 chest for copper and tin, 1 for iron and lead, and so on.
5. When you're in hardmode you want to keep your weapons in three different chests. Melee, ranged, and magic. I recommend keeping bombs, arrows, and ammo in another chest to the side.
6. Keep a chest for you're armors/vanities. I strongly recommend building an armor room to store your sets of armor. The less stuff in your chests, the better. Keep your accessories in 1 or more chests. For these, i really don't sort them because there is a large variety.
7. Keep a max of two armors/vanities, weapons, or accessories. You don't to be flooding your chests with stuff you already have.
8. If you are running out of space in armor/weapon chests, the best way to clean it is to sell the most useless items. the second way is to make another chest (Duhhh)
9. Keep your spawners in a chest by itself. Don't pair them with weapons, or materials, or whatever. There is a bunch of them, so they deserve their own chest.
10. Materials are usually kept in one or two chests, such as souls, feathers, pixie dust, and things like that. You should put mob drops in one chest, and placeable/world generated materials in another.
11. Keep a chest for your plants and your seeds by itself. Don't throw them in with your materials or potions.
12. Potions can be kept in one chest, but I recommend two. By putting healing and mana in one, and basics in the other, it becomes much more neat.
13. Fishing supplies deserve a chest of their own as well. I hope this helps many of you Terrarians in your adventures, as taking too long to search for one item may result in your death.
If you follow everything here, you should come to around 19/20 chests. Not too hard to get in my eyes. If you survived reading all that, you get a cookie :3
[A better formated post]