I use a large pizza box. It's sturdy and fits nicely in my storage cabinet. The local pizza parlor was willing to sell an unused box for $1.00.

I bought two large poster board heavy paper sheets. I don't know how else to describe them. Large sheets of light weight cardboard. My local dollar general store carries them but you can get them anywhere. I put them together and taped them on three sides with electrical tape to make a large envelope. I store all my stencils in this large envelope and slide it behind my bookcase in my studio. It works great for me! They are out of sight but safely stored and not bent.

I bought a small clothes rack and then hooked a ring through the hole on the stencil
and then this hooks around the pole of the rack...I was able to put dividiers to
seperate the different kinds of stencils which makes finding the correct one easy.
I was able to lower this so that is sits under the edge of my long cutting area and
I can easily pull it out , being that it is on wheels, to get the stencil I need.
Pati Beck

The question of how to store patterns reminded me to ask how everyone else stores their stencils. At the moment I have mine on rings and then they hang on a hook in a closet, but I'm getting a big enough collection now that I'm wondering if there is a better way? I'm thinking of adding a few more hooks and dividing up the stencils into smaller groups, but before I do that I'd like to know how other people handle their stencils.
Thanks!
Cindy