I have lots of loose ribbon I bought by the yard from an LSS or elsewhere. I have found some good tips for storing it from my friends and my own experience:

1. Sort it by color. Store orange with orange, black with black and so on.
2. Use some kind of divided storage. I personally use the Crop in Style Store in Style 3-drawer cubes with drawer dividers for my ribbon. I ball it up by color into each little 4" square divided area. Some ribbons are divided in to smaller categories, such as black ribbon which is divided into five sections: black with stitching, black with dots, sold black, sheer black, and black and pink becausee I use alot of that!). One of my friends uses the disposable little containers for food storage (like Gladware). She has the ribbon divided by color into each container and then stacks then for easy viewing on a shelf. When she needs ribbon for a crop, she just grabs the little container with the colors she needs. It is a great portable way to keep ribbon.
3. Stay organized. Don't just throw the ribbon back into any old container or drawer. You have to maintain the organization of your ribbon storage for it to work int he long run.

Hope that helps!