This probably won't help those that have been doing this a while, so this is more for somebody with no experience to stumble upon. Drawers and the flat organizers were out at this point (see other comment replies), so jars looked attractive. But how large?
I set out to try to figure out how much space a 1000 bag takes up. Reported measurements of what holds 1000 pcs were a bit different across the board here, so I decided to calculate it myself. Since there's no way I'm counting out 1000 of these things, and probably the bags don't even have exactly 1000 pcs, I had her buy a bag of black. The idea was to make a little paper box and measure how much space they take volumetrically.
These are some cheapie spice jars we picked up from Winco, each under a buck. 4 oz, 8 oz, 16 oz. They didn't say if that's fl oz or oz weight of some specific spice, so I threw water in one and weighed it. It's fl oz.
Weights:
1000 pack, bag removed - 60.20g
4 fl oz, full (tared) - 47.33g
8 fl oz, full (tared) - 87.40g
16 fl oz, full (tared) - 182g
Results:
4 fl oz holds about 786 beads
8 fl oz holds about 1452 beads
16 fl oz holds about 3023 beads
These are all rough numbers. Containers probably vary slightly within a batch. The 4 oz was probably slightly overfilled and the 8 oz slightly underfilled, but it's close enough. Roughly 8 oz seems to be the winner for refilling before empty.
Also found these Perler brand 80-22816 storage jars and pre-filled 80-22826 neutrals/80-22825 pastels/80-22824 tropicals sets. They look pretty close to 100% full at 1000 beads, so I'm guessing they're roughly 6 fl oz. If I can find some square-ish plastic 8 oz jars at a similar price (for closer packing), I'll probably go with those. Otherwise, I'll just call it a day and go with the branded ones.
1/3 of a 1000 pack is way less than I expected. Hmmm.
Looking at jars now. I had her pick up a 1000 bag and some jars to play around with measuring today, so I'll post the findings in a new common thread under this self-post.
Just stumbled upon this 12 pack of Perler brand tall plastic jars and this 4000 pc Neutrals box set in tubes for only a couple bucks more than 4x 1000 bag.
Seems to kill 2 birds with 1 stone... lots of black/white and the tubes come with. I might just grab a couple of these and some empty tubes. We'd have to use plastic baggies temporarily for sorting the nightmare until she runs out a few of the tubes, but I think I can find shelf space high enough away from the kid.
